Mrs. Everidge spoke the last words softly and Evadne, looking at her uplifted face, shining now with the radiance which always filled it when she spoke of her Lord, saw again that glowing face which she had watched across the gate at Hollywood and heard the strange, exultant tones, ’He is my King!’ Ah, that was beautiful!  That was what Aunt Marthe meant, and Pompey and Dyce.

“Jesus must come to abide, not merely as a transient guest,” Aunt Marthe continued in her low tones.  “We must give him full control of our thought and will.  We must hand him the keys of the citadel.  We must give the all for the all,—­that is only fair dealing.  You see, dear child, Christ cannot fill us until we are willing to be emptied of self.  He must have undivided possession.  There is a vast amount of heartache, little one, in this old world, and self is at the bottom of it all, when we stop to analyze it.  We want to be first, to be thought much of, to be loved best.  No wonder that the selfless life seems impossible to most people.  Think what a continuous self-sacrifice Christ’s life was!  So utterly alone and lonely among such uncongenial surroundings with people uncouth and totally foreign to his tastes.  Ah! we don’t realize it.  We look at him doing the splendid things amidst the plaudits of the multitude, but think of the monotonous, weary days, going up and down the sun-baked streets surrounded by a crowd of noisy beggars full of all sorts of loathsome disease, and the humdrum life in Nazareth; and all the time the great heart aching with that ceaseless sorrow,—­’His own received him not!’ Oh, what a waste of love!  We do not realize that it is in these footsteps of his that we are called to follow.  We are willing to do the great things, with the world looking on, but not for the loneliness and the pain!  It seems a strange antithesis that Paul should count that as his highest glory, and yet how comparatively few seem counted worthy to enter with Christ into the shadow of that mysterious Gethsemane which lasted all his life.  ’The fellowship of his sufferings.’  It must surely mean the privilege of getting very near his heart, just as human hearts grow closer in a common sorrow,—­knit by pain.  Yes, dear child, self must die:  and it is a cruel death,—­the death of the cross.  But then comes the newness of life with its strange, sweet joy which the world’s children do not know the taste of.  How can they when it is ‘the joy of the Lord,’ and they reject him?”

“You talk of the cross, Aunt Marthe, and other people talk of crosses.  Aunt Kate and Isabelle are always talking about the sacrifices they have to make, and Mrs. Rivers carries a perfect bundle of crosses on her back.  She is wealthy and has everything she wants, and yet she is always wailing, while Dyce is as happy as the day is long.  Do the poor Christians always do the singing while the rich ones sigh?”

Mrs. Everidge smiled.  “We make our crosses, dear child, when we put our wishes at right angles to God’s will.  When we only care to please him everything that he chooses for us seems just right.  I have heard people speak as if it were a cross to mention the name of Christ.  How could it be if they loved him?  Do you find it a cross to talk to me about your father?  People make a terrible mistake about this.  The only cross we are commanded to carry is the cross of Christ.”