“The relief must have been exquisite. I thought of the incident when your letter came, when I had submerged myself in it. I had forgotten it for years, but remembered it then. I too had passed in one moment from exquisite agony to a most wonderful calm. Dear love, how can I thank you! I am not going to try. Anne and I will come by the train arriving at Pineland at 4.52. I will not ask your kindness for her; I see you diffusing it. She will be grateful, and the form her gratitude will take will be the endeavour to convert you to Christian Science. My sweet darling, you will listen gravely, patiently. And I shall know it will be for me. I have done nothing to deserve you, am nothing, only your worshipper. Some day perhaps you will let me do something for you. Dear heart, I love you, love you, love you, however I write.” G. S. Friday, Margaret decided it was better that she should entertain her guests alone. She had to learn the idiosyncrasies of this poor sister of her lover’s, to acclimatise herself to a new atmosphere between herself and Gabriel. She invited Peter Kennedy to dine with them on Saturday, but bade him not to speak lightly of Christian Science. “What’s the game?” he asked her. “I think it is probably some form of mesmerism; I don’t quite know. Anyway Mr. Stanton’s sister is an invalid and thinks Christian Science has relieved her. You are not to laugh at or argue with her.” “I am to dine here and talk to her, I suppose, whilst you and that fellow ogle and make love to each other.” She turned a cold shoulder to him. “I withdraw my invitation, you need not come at all.” “Of course I shall come. And what is the name of the thing? Christian Science? I’ll get it up. You know I’d do anything on earth you asked me, though you treat me like a dog.” “At least you snatch an occasional bone,” she smiled as he mumbled her hand. Margaret sent for Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health; with a Key to the Scriptures,” and spent the emptiest two hours she could remember in trying to master the viewpoint of the book, the essential dogma. Failing completely she flung it to Peter Kennedy, who read aloud to her sentence after sentence as illuminative as these: “‘_Destructive electricity is not the offspring of infinite good._’ Who the devil said it was?” “Hush, go on. There must be something more in it than that.” He turned to the title-page, “‘Printed and published at Earlswood’? No, my mistake—at Boston. ‘_Christian Science rationally explains that all other pathological methods are the fruits of human faith in matter, in the working, not of spirit, but of the fleshly mind, which must yield to Science._’ Don’t knit your brows. What’s the good of swotting at it? Let’s say Abracadabra to her and see what happens.” “What an indolent man you are. Is that the way you worked at your examination?” “I qualified.”