“You’d be surer of martyrdom if you told them to love their neighbors as themselves,” said Helen. “Seriously now, that’s the hardest thing there is to do! Love my neighbor as myself! Me! Why, on one side my neighbor’s children snowball my windows; on the other side there’s a chimney that ruins me paying cleaner’s bills. Perhaps you’d speak to them for me, Millie?”
“See here!” exclaimed Millicent. “Where do you get this idea of using me as a missionary and policeman! I don’t feel any urge to reform the world! I’m awful busy tending to my own business.”
“Oh, all right,” said Bruce with a sigh of resignation. “Let the world go hang, then, if you won’t save it!”
Helen was dressing the salad, and Bruce was free to watch Millicent’s eyes as they filled with dreams. As at other times when some grave mood touched her, it seemed that she became another being, exploring some realm alien to common experience. He glanced at her hands, folded quietly on the edge of the table, and again at her dream-filled eyes. Hers was the repose of a nature schooled in serenity. The world might rage in fury about her, but amid the tempest her soul would remain unshaken....
Helen, to whom silence was always disturbing, looked up, but stifled an apology for the unconscionable time she was taking with the salad when she saw Millicent’s face, and Bruce’s intent, reverent gaze fixed upon the girl.
“Saving the world!” Millicent repeated deliberatingly. “I never quite like the idea. It rather suggests—doesn’t it?—that some new machinery or method must be devised for saving it. But the secret came into the world ever so long ago—it was the ideal of beauty. A Beautiful Being died that man might know the secret of happiness. It had to be that way or man would never have understood or remembered. It’s not His fault that his ideas have been so confused and obscured in the centuries that have passed since He came. It’s man’s fault. The very simplicity of His example has always bewildered man; it was too good to be true!”
“But, Millie,” said Helen with a little embarrassed laugh, “does the world really want to live as Jesus lived? Or would it admire people who did? Somebody said once that Christianity isn’t a failure because it’s never been tried. Will it ever be tried—does anyone care enough?”
“Dear me! What have I gotten into?” Millicent picked up her fork and glanced at them smilingly. “Bruce, don’t look so terribly solemn! Why, people are trying it every day, at least pecking at it a little. I’ve caught you at it lots of times! While we sit here, enjoying this quite wonderful salad, scores of people are doing things to make the world a better place to live in—safer, kinder and happier. I saw a child walk out of the hospital the other day who’d been carried in, a pitiful little cripple. It was a miracle; and if you’d seen the child’s delight and the look in the face of the doctor whose genius did the work, you’d have thought the secret of Jesus is making some headway!”
“And knowing the very charming young woman named Millicent who found that little crippled girl and took her to the hospital. I’d have thought a lot more things!”
“I never did it!” Millicent cried.