It was inevitable that Phillida should turn Philip's talk over in her mind again and again. There were moments when she felt that her healing power might be as much of a delusion as the divinity in the touch of the merry King Charles. There were other times when Dr. Beswick's infecting bacteria germinated in her imagination and threatened destruction to her faith, and yet other times when sheer repulsion from Miss Bowyer's cant of metaphysical and Christian therapeutics inclined her to renounce the belief in faith-cure, which seemed somehow a second cousin to this grotesque science. But the great barrier remained; in her mind faith-healing had associated itself with other phases of religious belief, and she could find no resting-place for her feet betwixt her faith and Philip's ill-concealed general skepticism. She did go so far as to adopt Philip's opinion that an exclusive occupation of the mind with the immensities rendered life unendurable. She came to envy her cousin his eagerness over unreadable Indian Bibles, black-letter Caxtons, and a rare date on a title-page. She envied Millard the diversion that came to him from his interest in people, his taste in dress, his care for the small proprieties, his love for all the minor graces of life. Why should she alone of the three be crushed beneath the trip-hammer of the immensities? But she ended always as she had begun, by reverting to that ancestral spirit of religious strenuousness in which she had been bred and cradled, and by planting herself once more upon the eleventh of Hebrews and the renowned victories of faith that had been the glory of the Church in every age. To leave this ground seemed to her an abandonment by consequence of all that was dearest and noblest in life. Nor was she aware that with each cross-examination her hold on the cherished belief became less firm. About two weeks after her talk with Philip she had just concluded a fresh conflict of this sort, and settled herself once more in what she intended should hereafter prove an unwavering faith in the efficacy of prayer, at least in certain cases, even against all sorts of bacteria, when it was announced that Mr. Martin wished to see her. It was eight o'clock, and the evening was a raw and rainy one in March. "Howdy do, Miss Callender? How's all with you?" said Martin, when Phillida appeared at the door. "How do you do, Mr. Martin?" she said. "Won't you come in?" "No, thank you," said Martin, standing shivering in the vestibule, his solemn face looking neither more nor less like mortuary sculpture than it ever did. "Mother wants to know if you won't come down right away this evening. Our Tommy is seemingly sick." "Seemingly sick?" asked Phillida. "How do you mean?" "He's got a belief in a sore throat," said Mr. Martin, "and he's seemingly not well. Mother'd like to see you."