not acquainted with the Spirit of God; she did not know that he was speaking to her softened heart, and calling her gently to himself, so she felt ashamed of the emotion that she could not help.  She wiped the tears away secretly, and was glad that the night was dark and the need for haste great, for the steamer’s warning whistle could already be beard.  Marion talked on as they went down the hill, not alone now but accompanied by hundreds, talked precisely as she had before the singing of those words and the prayer.  “How could she?” Flossy wondered.  “How could anything look the same to her?” The Spirit had found no softened heart in which to leave a message, and so had passed by.  This, if Flossy had known it, was the reason that Marion was gay and indifferent.  If either of them had fully realized the reason for the different effect of the meeting upon them, how startled they would have been!  It is not strange after all that a service is not the same to one soul that it is to another, when we remember that God speaks to one and passes another.

The night was still heavy with clouds, not a star to lighten the gloom; a fine mist was falling.  It was Marion who shivered this time, and said: 

“It is a horrible night, that is a fact; but I am not sorry we went.  That meeting will write up splendidly, though it was too long; I will say that in print about it.  You must find some fault, you know, when you are writing for the public; it is the fashion.”

“Was it long?” said Flossy, in an absent tone.  She had not thought of it in that way.  Then she went to the side of the boat again and sat down in a tumult.  What was the matter with her?  Where had her complacent, pretty little content gone?  Would she always feel so sad and anxious and unhappy, have such a longing as she did now?  If she had been wiser she could have told herself that the trouble of heart was caused by an unhealthy excitement upon this question, and that this was the great fault with religious meetings; but she was not wise, she did not think of such a reason.  If it had been suggested to her it is doubtful if, in her ignorance, she would not have said:  “Why, she had been more excited at an evening party a hundred times than she had thought of being then!” She actually did not know that eagerness and zeal are proper enough at parties, but utterly out of place in religion.  Just in front of her sat a young man who hummed in undertone the closing words of the covenant song.  It brought the tears again to Flossy’s eyes.  He turned suddenly toward her.

“It was a pleasant service,” he said.  “Don’t you think so?”

It was rather startling to be addressed by a strange young gentleman, or would have been it his voice had not been so quiet and dignified, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to compare notes with one who had just come out from the great meeting.

“I don’t know whether it was or not,” she said, hurriedly.  She could not seem to decide whether she enjoyed it or hated it.