He looked at her, and the gleam in his dark eyes softened.
"Forgive me," he said, "I spoke too strongly. Yes, I believe there is reality—a little—somewhere," and he smiled. Something in her soft brown eyes as he looked in them carried him many years back, when eyes something like them looked down on him, while a voice sang sacred words which he knew the heart loved well. Yes, there was reality somewhere.
CHAPTER IV
ADELE
Winifred awoke Tuesday morning with melody in her heart. She moved about her room with the exhilaration of a fresh joy in living. She took her Bible, which still wore the genteel, unsullied dress of a stranger, and turned to the place she wished to read. She had not got beyond the text of Sunday:
"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth."
She pondered the text. "Shall worship the Father," she mused. "Oh, how sweet! That august One whom I feared is 'the Father.' He loves me!"
She went with her book to the open window and stood, a fair priestess in her white morning dress, and looked out over a portion of her Father's wide domain. Oh, how warm and bright the sunlight that lit all things with glory! How fair were the distant hills beyond the city, with their varied dress of wood and meadow! In the garden below, how each group of flowers and the green sward answered with joy to the caress of the sun. How exultantly the lilies stood, and she could catch the incense from the bed of tiny clustering flowers nearest her window. She lifted her face toward the sky of melting summer blue, and sang softly:
"Holy, holy, holy; Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy name,
in earth and sky and sea;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty;
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!"
She looked again at the words whose entrance had given light, and read farther: "For the Father seeketh such to worship Him."