“Go away.  I’se looking at myself,” had explained Joan, struggling furiously to regain the glass.

“But where are your clothes?” was Mrs. Munday’s wonder.

“I’se tooked them off,” explained Joan.  A piece of information that really, all things considered, seemed unnecessary.

“But can’t you see yourself, you wicked child, without stripping yourself as naked as you were born?”

“No,” maintained Joan stoutly.  “I hate clothes.”  As a matter of fact she didn’t, even in those early days.  On the contrary, one of her favourite amusements was “dressing up.”  This sudden overmastering desire to arrive at the truth about herself had been a new conceit.

“I wanted to see myself.  Clothes ain’t me,” was all she would or could vouchsafe; and Mrs. Munday had shook her head, and had freely confessed that there were things beyond her and that Joan was one of them; and had succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in restoring to Joan once more the semblance of a Christian child.

It was Mrs. Munday, poor soul, who all unconsciously had planted the seeds of disbelief in Joan’s mind.  Mrs. Munday’s God, from Joan’s point of view, was a most objectionable personage.  He talked a lot—­or rather Mrs. Munday talked for Him—­about His love for little children.  But it seemed He only loved them when they were good.  Joan was under no delusions about herself.  If those were His terms, well, then, so far as she could see, He wasn’t going to be of much use to her.  Besides, if He hated naughty children, why did He make them naughty?  At a moderate estimate quite half Joan’s wickedness, so it seemed to Joan, came to her unbidden.  Take for example that self-examination before the cheval glass.  The idea had come into her mind.  It had never occurred to her that it was wicked.  If, as Mrs. Munday explained, it was the Devil that had whispered it to her, then what did God mean by allowing the Devil to go about persuading little girls to do indecent things?  God could do everything.  Why didn’t He smash the Devil?  It seemed to Joan a mean trick, look at it how you would.  Fancy leaving a little girl to fight the Devil all by herself.  And then get angry because the Devil won!  Joan came to cordially dislike Mrs. Munday’s God.

Looking back it was easy enough to smile, but the agony of many nights when she had lain awake for hours battling with her childish terrors had left a burning sense of anger in Joan’s heart.  Poor mazed, bewildered Mrs. Munday, preaching the eternal damnation of the wicked—­who had loved her, who had only thought to do her duty, the blame was not hers.  But that a religion capable of inflicting such suffering upon the innocent should still be preached; maintained by the State!  That its educated followers no longer believed in a physical Hell, that its more advanced clergy had entered into a conspiracy of silence on the subject was no answer.  The great mass of