If the gift were noble, so also it could not be ignoble to accept it.

To reject it would be to dishonour it.

She would accept it.  The wonder of it should cast out her doubts and fears.  She would seek to make herself worthy of it.  Consecrate it with her steadfastness, her devotion.

She thought it ended.  But yet she sat there motionless.

What was plucking at her sleeve—­still holding her?

Unknowing, she had entered a small garden.  It formed a passage between two streets, and was left open day and night.  It was but a narrow strip of rank grass and withered shrubs with an asphalte pathway widening to a circle in the centre, where stood a gas lamp and two seats, facing one another.

And suddenly it came to her that this was her Garden of Gethsemane; and a dull laugh broke from her that she could not help.  It was such a ridiculous apology for Gethsemane.  There was not a corner in which one could possibly pray.  Only these two iron seats, one each side of the gaunt gas lamp that glared down upon them.  Even the withered shrubs were fenced off behind a railing.  A ragged figure sprawled upon the bench opposite to her.  It snored gently, and its breath came laden with the odour of cheap whisky.

But it was her Gethsemane:  the best that Fate had been able to do for her.  It was here that her choice would be made.  She felt that.

And there rose before her the vision of that other Garden of Gethsemane with, below it, the soft lights of the city shining through the trees; and above, clear against the starlit sky, the cold, dark cross.

It was only a little cross, hers, by comparison.  She could see that.  They seemed to be standing side by side.  But then she was only a woman—­little more than a girl.  And her courage was so small.  She thought He ought to know that.  For her, it was quite a big cross.  She wondered if He had been listening to all her arguments.  There was really a good deal of sense in some of them.  Perhaps He would understand.  Not all His prayer had come down to us.  He, too, had put up a fight for life.  He, too, was young.  For Him, also, life must have seemed but just beginning.  Perhaps He, too, had felt that His duty still lay among the people—­teaching, guiding, healing them.  To Him, too, life must have been sweet with its noble work, its loving comradeship.  Even from Him the words had to be wrung:  “Thy will, not Mine, be done.”

She whispered them at last.  Not bravely, at all.  Feebly, haltingly, with a little sob:  her forehead pressed against the cold iron seat, as if that could help her.

She thought that even then God might reconsider it—­see her point of view.  Perhaps He would send her a sign.

The ragged figure on the bench opposite opened its eyes, stared at her; then went to sleep again.  A prowling cat paused to rub itself against her foot, but meeting no response, passed on.  Through an open window, somewhere near, filtered the sound of a child’s low whimpering.