She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by those halting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was not apparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.
"I'm very, very glad you should have spoken, childie ... perhaps we can get this straightened out between us. That's a terrible idea of yours, you know, that things aren't worth while. Why, at your age, anything ought to be worth while—over and over again, Lily. The games and the lessons, and the little brother at home—it's all worth while, dearie. While you're thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call to devote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunities are slipping by you—you're squandering all your energies on fancies that mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into what you're doing, Lily—into the living present. Why, it's all worth while! As I told you just now, it isn't the number of runs you make in the cricket match that matters, it's the spirit that holds the whole eleven together, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match. That's what matters!"
Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel no real response within herself to these rousing truths?
At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alien standards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish the latter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody's inspiring banner.
"The games in themselves are only games. True," said Miss Melody. "But there's something else, Lily. I wonder if you've ever thought of it? Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honour and glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul has written about that—didn't we have it, not so very long ago, at our reading? And don't you think, if you want a motive, that you have an adequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won't ask again 'what's it all for' or whether it's worth while, will you?"
Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate, inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?—"The Apostle Paul spoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until I have evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from that lack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you, and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all."
Nothing is more certain than that no such arrogant lucidity sprang either to her mind or to her lips.
"I'll try, Miss Melody——" she said, earnestly and meekly.
"I know you will, I'm quite sure of it. There's a big effort to be made, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but it can be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel that you can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answer you. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years ago still write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school by now.
"Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own future is to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the little brother, or do you want a home of your very own—marriage, Lily?"