"I don't know," Marion said, speaking hesitatingly, as one who would like to say more if she dared. "I don't feel competent to answer that question, and yet, sometimes, I have feared that you might be trying to compromise with the Lord." "I don't understand you; in what way do you mean? I try to do my duty in every place that I can think of. I am not compromising on any subject, so far as I know. If I am, I will certainly be grateful to anyone who will point it out to me." "I am not sure that it is sufficiently clear to my own mind to be able to point it out," Marion said, still visibly embarrassed. "But, Ruth, it sometimes seems to me as if you had said to yourself, 'Now I will work so much and pray so much, and then I ought to have rest from the pain that is goading me on, and I ought to be able to feel that I have atoned for past mistakes, and the account against me is squared.'" Ruth turned from her impatiently. "You are a strange comforter," she said, almost indignantly. "Do you mean by that to intimate that you think I ought _never_ to look or hope for rest of mind again because I have made one fearful mistake? Do you mean that I ought always to carry with me the sense of the burden?" "I mean no such thing. You cannot think I so estimate the power of the sacrifice for sin. Ruth, I mean simply this: Nothing that you or I can do can possibly make one sin white, one mistake as though it had not been, give one moment of rest to a troubled heart. But the blood of Jesus Christ can do all this, and it does seem to me that you are ignoring it, and trying to work out your own rest." Ruth was thoughtful; the look of vexation passed from her face. "It may be so," she said, after a long silence. "I begin dimly to understand your meaning; but I don't know how to help it, how to feel differently. I surely ought to work, and surely I have a right to expect results." "In one sense, yes, and in another I don't believe we have. I begin to feel more and more that you and I have _got_ in some way to be made to understand that it is not our way, but the Lord's, that we must be willing to do, or, what is harder, to leave undone, exactly what he says, _do_ or _not_ do. I can't help feeling that you are planning in your own heart just what ought to be done, and then allowing yourself to feel almost indignant and ill-used because the work is not accomplished." "I don't know how you have succeeded in seeing so deeply into my heart," Ruth said, with a wan smile. "I believe it is so, though I am not sure that I ever saw it before."