It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her love upon. Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for many months. The situation had been graver than she was willing to acknowledge to herself. Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it--and not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love's unforgivable blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her heart. For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering--an idol that had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely through that deepening gloom of doubt. Now all was well again. In this new light the dear idol might even at times show a dual personality--one kneeling beside her very earnestly to worship the other with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her husband--and, therefore, in God--she went to Aunt Bell. She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, "The Beautiful Within," her particular chapter being headed, "Psychology of Rest: Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism with Subliminal Spontaneity." Over this frank revelation of hidden truths Aunt Bell's handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in sub-rhythms of psychic placidity--a state from which Nancy's animated entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife spoke, she divested herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn behind her book. "Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan _fine_! Of course, in a way, it's too bad--doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his heart upon--and he knows it, too--but he's going calmly ahead as if the day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, martyrs are _so_ dowdy and out-of-date--but there he is, a great, noble, beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is stunning!" "What has Allan been saying now?" asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved. "_Said?_ It's what he's _doing!_ The dear, big, stupid thing is going down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus--the poor beggar in Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you remember?" she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the centre of psychic repose. "Well?" "Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to _any one_ in this age--then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men and expecting to receive a call from them!"