Then she reflected that she would study to be earnest, that she would school herself to think of Him and sing to Him.  She took her hymn-book and found the place of the last hymn, resolved to put sincerity in practice at once.  It was chosen, without reference to the unexpected sermon, and was the well-known psalm of love and longing which earnest souls have sung for many years: 

  “For thee, O dear, dear country,
  Mine eyes their vigils keep;
  For very love, beholding
  Thy happy name they weep. 
  The mention of Thy glory
  Is unction to the breast,
  And medicine in sickness,
  And love, and life, and rest.”

“I cannot sing it!” Winifred almost sobbed to herself.  “It is not true—­to me.”

Then she read on.  Before, she would have been carried away with the rhythm and the graceful thought.  But now as she read: 

“Oh, sweet and blessed country That eager hearts expect!”

“It’s not true—­it’s not true!” she thought.  “I cannot sing these songs.  I know nothing of their sentiment.  I am not a true worshiper of the Father.  I do not believe I know Him!”

Then Winifred covered her eyes with her hand. “’Thou desirest truth in the inward parts,’” the preacher was quoting.

The words sent a pang through her heart.  “God has found no truth in me,” she thought, “I have been a lie.”

Then she sat in wretchedness, fighting back the tears that struggled to escape—­tears of shame, remorse, wounded self-love, and grief that her favorite idol, a god whom she did know and had served well, was to be taken down from its niche in the house of the Lord and cast out.  She heard little of the remainder of the sermon, and what she heard added to her misery; for it told of the joy of true worshipers when at last they should stand face to face with Him whom, having not seen, they love,—­

  “All rapture through and through
  In God’s most holy sight.”

The sense of isolation, of exclusion from it all, was very painful; and Winifred did not know that this very knowledge of exclusion, and its grief, were harbingers of eternally better things.  She stood with the others as they sang the closing hymn, and her own silence was unobserved, as she did not always join the chorus.  She had recovered her composure by the time the benediction was pronounced and the organ was yielding an unusually lively postlude to whose strains she and George Frothingham descended the stairs together.

“The old chap is almost waltzing us out to-day,” that gentleman remarked, referring to the organist.  “Winifred, you outdid yourself to-day on that lovely thing.”

Winifred smiled faintly.  “Did you hear the sermon to-day, George?” she asked.

“Did I hear it?  Well, that’s good.  Do I hear sermons when I go to church?  But I confess to a little absentmindedness; not to equal that of our friend at the organ, however,” and George laughed.  Then he caught sight of a group of people in the vestibule below and exclaimed: