“When we love our Father it is our joy to do his will,” she answered softly.

“If I could live like you and Randolph I should be perfectly satisfied.  I wish I had the courage to try.”

“Mere outward living cannot save us, Louis.  Nothing can but faith in the atoning blood and the name and the love of Christ.  Then—­when we believe, you know—­all things become possible.  We make an awful mistake when we think we know better than the Bible.  Nicodemus lived a perfect outward life, yet Christ said to him, ’Except ye be born again—­of the Word and the Spirit—­ye cannot see the Kingdom of God.’  We are running a terrible risk when we try to live without Jesus.”

“That is what Randolph says.  He is a one idea man, if ever there was one, and yet he is so many sided!  He is the most uncompromising fellow I ever knew.  I should as soon expect to see the stars fall from the sky as to see him do a shady thing.  You would be amused, coz, to see the lady mother and Isabelle joining forces to lay siege to his affections.”

What meant that sudden start and then the blush which flamed up over cheek and brow?  Louis Hildreth closed his thin fingers over Evadne’s ring with a long drawn sigh.  He was beginning to realize that a hand, without a heart, is an empty thing.

Long after she had left him he lay motionless.  This knowledge which had come to him so suddenly had a bitter taste.

* * * * *

“You ought to get well, Hildreth, and you ought to be a very happy man,” John Randolph spoke the words suddenly as he rose to take his leave.

“I never expect to be either.  When a man has all he has prided himself upon swept away from him, and all that he longs for denied him, how can it be possible?”

“‘Count it your highest good when God denies you.’  Is that too hard a gospel?  We shall not read it so in the light of eternity.  It is only that Christ may become to us the ‘altogether lovely’ One.”

“Did you ever love—­a woman?” Louis put the question suddenly, watching his friend’s face with a jealous scrutiny.

“Yes.”  The answer was as simple and straightforward as the man.  He knew of nothing to be ashamed of in this beautiful love of his life.

“And her name was?—­”

“Evadne.”

John Randolph spoke the name for the first time to another, looking up at the sky.  When he turned to leave the room he saw that Louis’ face was buried among his cushions and he drove away in a great wonderment.  What could it all mean?

  “Knocking, knocking, who is there? 
    Waiting, waiting, oh, how fair! 
  ’T is a pilgrim, strange and kingly,
    Never such was seen before. 
  Ah, my soul, for such a wonder,
    Wilt thou not undo the door?”

Evadne sang the words softly in the twilight:  sang them with a great note of longing in her pleading voice.  She and her cousin were alone.