Winifred wrote a simple, truthful note to Mrs. Butterworth, and was relieved when it was dispatched.  A sensitive dread of criticism and of doing an unusual thing was offset by the sweet consciousness of a happy fellowship conserved.  No rude breath from the gay assembly’s sensuous delights was to blow upon this flower of communion, so pure, so fragrant.  So Winifred rejoiced, only an occasional shadow falling athwart her peace when she thought of one whose increasingly intimate fellowship threatened the life of the fair flower as surely as could Mrs. Butterworth’s party.  It was an uneasy suggestion, not a recognized fact, and she put it hastily from her when it arose.

The evening of the party came and Mrs. Gray prepared herself and went, not too early and not too foolishly late.  She had a faculty of striking the happy mean in life’s proprieties.  Winifred looked at her admiringly, with the candid conviction that no better dressed nor finer looking woman of her years would be there.  She felt a pang of sorrow, too, in her mother’s disappointment at leaving her behind, as she kissed her good-night.  The carriage rolled away and presently bore its fair passenger to the door of her friend’s brilliantly lighted house, where we will leave her.

CHAPTER X

THE CHURCH SOCIAL

Another social event followed hard on the heels of Mrs. Butterworth’s party, and this Mrs. Gray succeeded in inducing both her son and daughter to attend, it being no less sacred a function than the quarterly Church Social.  Hubert was not familiar with the institution, but so ardently burned his love for the Lord Jesus Christ that he now sought rather than avoided the company of those who knew Him, if so be some word of Him might be spoken.  He longed for the fellowship of joy with those who, like himself, had been called out of darkness into “His marvelous light.”  This was denied in the formal services of the church, but surely the pent up devotion of the worshipers would find some avenue of expression when they met together socially without those restraints.  Hubert was disposed to discount his own former estimate of church-members’ sincerity, and did not doubt that many had found an experience as genuine as his own of the grace of God.

Mr. Gray did not care to go, preferring the library and the new number with its fascinating leaves uncut of a magazine, religio-worldly, that had solved for last days the problem beyond the Saviour’s ken of how to serve God and mammon.  Three went, however, in the comfortable carriage, to Mrs. Gray’s great satisfaction, and drew up before the side entrance to the handsome church.

Bright light streamed from the parlor windows, illuminating exquisitely stained pictures of the Apostles.  Strains from a select orchestra greeted them as they entered the house, and Hubert recognized with a queer feeling of incongruity the overture from a well-known opera.  The appealing notes of the violins drew his memory instantly to the production he had lately enjoyed, but he thrust the mental vision from him as unworthy of Christ, and tried not to listen to the seductive strains.