"Do you think so? And—then there would be no necessity for—for——"
"Langly!"
Strelsa flushed. "I wonder," she mused. "I wonder whether—but it seems impossible that I should suddenly find I didn't care for everything I cared for this winter. Perhaps I'm too tired to care just now."
"It might be," said Molly, "that something—for example your friendship with Rix—had made other matters seem less important."
The girl looked up quickly, saw nothing in Molly's expression to disturb her, then turned her eyes away, and lay silent, considering.
If her friendship for Quarren had imperceptibly filled her mind, even crowding aside other and most important matters, she did not realise it. She thought of it now, and of him—recalling the letter she had written.
Vaguely she was aware of the difference in her attitude toward life since she wrote that letter only a few days before. To what was it due? To his letter in reply now lying between the leaves of her New Testament on the table beside her? This was his letter:
"Hold out, Strelsa! Matters are going well with me. Your tide, too, will turn before you know it. But neither man nor woman is going to aid you, only time, Strelsa, and—something that neither you nor I have bothered about very much—something that has many names in many tongues—but they all mean the same. And the symbol of what they mean is Truth.
"Why not study it? We never have. All sages of all times have studied it and found comfort; all saints in all ages have found in it strength.
"I find its traces in every ancient picture that I touch. But there are books still older that have lived because of it. And one man died for it—man or God as you will—the former is more fashionable.
"Lives that have been lived because of it, given for it, forgiven for its sake, are worth our casual study.
"For they say there is no greater thing than Truth. I can imagine no greater. And the search for it is interesting—fascinating—I had no idea how absorbing until recently—until I first saw you, who sent me out into the world to work.
"Hold out—and study this curious subject of Truth for a little while. Will you?
"If you'll only study it a while I promise that it will interest you—not in its formalisms, not in its petty rituals and observances, nor in its endless nomenclature, nor its orthodoxy—but just as you discover it for yourself in the histories of men and women—of saint and sinner—and, above all, in the matchless life of Him who understood them all.
"Non tu corpus eras sine pectore!"
Lying there, remembering his letter almost word for word, and where it now lay among printed pages incomprehensible to her except by the mechanical processes of formal faith and superficial observance, she wondered how much that, and the scarcely scanned printed page, might have altered her views of life.
Molly kissed her again and went away downstairs.