she prayed, "a way to come to Thee just as I am?" And the sound of her own words brought back the memory of the old song, familiar since her childhood:

  "Just as I am without one plea,
  But that Thy blood was shed for me,
  And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
    O Lamb of God, I come!"

"O God," she cried, "I can sing that! I do come, just as I am—I do come!"

A sweet sense of rest, such as she had never known, stole into Winifred's heart. Some One seemed to be welcoming her with ineffable tenderness. She was not out in the dark, but was at home with God. The awful presence she had dreaded was infinitely sweet. At last she stood in the Holy Place, still foolish, weak, unworthy, but with the glory of Another's name covering her as with priestly robes, and she worshiped.

CHAPTER III

THE CONFESSION

When Winifred awoke the nest morning it was to wonder if it were really true—if she had come to God and He had received her. A sweet rest still in her heart testified to a burden lifted. Her Bible lay open on the little table where she had found the minister's text while fighting her battle the day before. A leaf or two had blown over, and she looked down on the sixth chapter of John and read,

"Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."

Renewed assurance came with the words.

"I believe it," she said to herself. "I have been very false, but He is true. He says the truth. I believe it."

The thought of the choir scarcely entered her mind now in her new-found joy. The question, to sing or not to sing, had shifted to the deeper one of relationship to God, and the peace that came with its settlement overshadowed everything else. She went down to breakfast with a light heart and very cheerful countenance. Hubert looked at her in surprise from under gloomy brows. His own had been a restless night.

"Has your headache gone, dear?" asked her mother solicitously.

"Oh, long ago, Mother," said Winifred. She wanted to tell her mother the better news than of a headache gone, but did not know how to begin.

They talked of ordinary things until breakfast was nearly over. Then
Mr. Gray said:

"Mr. Mercer was sorry to miss you from the choir last night, Winnie, and hoped you were not going to be ill."

"Thank you, Father. Mr. Mercer is always very kind."

"He hopes you will surely be at the rehearsal Friday night, as he expects to take up some specially fine music."

Winifred's heart heat violently as she summoned courage to say:

"I do not think I shall sing in the choir any more, Father."

"Why—what, Winnie? What's that you are saying? You not sing in the choir any more?"

"What are you saying, Winifred," added Mrs. Gray.

Winifred nerved herself for the statement. It might as well he said now as ever, while they were all together.

"Yes, Father," she said, "I do not think I can sing in the choir any longer. I saw very clearly yesterday that I had never been a true worshiper. I have never meant the words that I sang. I have scarcely thought about God while I sang words about Him or addressed to Him. Many of them I could not say honestly. It has all been for effect, and to—to please you all. So I—I concluded—I—couldn't go on any longer."

It had been a very difficult speech, and Winifred's voice sank at the end.

Mr. Gray looked very grave.

"You surprise me, Winnie," he said. "You surprise me very much. You should be conscientious, surely, but you will let me say I think you are taking the matter too seriously,"

Silent Hubert shot a reproachful glance at his father. In his estimation here was a case of downright honesty that called for applause, not repression.

"I think your father is right, Winifred," said Mrs. Gray faintly, and then she added, rather illogically, "but I do not understand just what you mean."

"Can I take the truth too seriously, Father?" asked Winifred, still speaking with an effort. It was an ingenuous question, but Robert Gray found it hard to answer.

"No," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "not truth itself, but we may get wrong ideas of it. But, Winnie," he added, with real sorrow in his voice, "I hope you do not mean to tell us that you will not hereafter try to worship God, since the past has been so unsatisfactory to you?"

"Oh, no, Father," said Winifred quickly, with rising courage as her experience of the night before came vividly to her. "I have more to tell. I was very unhappy about it all last night, and—I prayed—she blushed, for it was new to speak of such things—I prayed, and it came to me that there was a way to come to God just as I was, and He would make me a true worshiper; and I came."

Winifred's embarrassment could not quite cover her joy as she made her confession. The father looked relieved.

"I am thankful,—very thankful, Winnie," he said. "You did nobly. That was quite right—quite right. But now I do not see that you need give up your singing, but that you might go on sincerely where you have failed before."

He looked a little anxious, for her singing in the church was very dear to him.

Winifred's brow clouded. "I fear I cannot, Father. Not now, at least."

"No? Well, we'll talk about it later," he said kindly, and they left the breakfast table.

In the hall Hubert waited for Winifred with his own form of benediction:

"You're a brick, Winnie," he said, and planted a kiss upon her fair forehead.

She smiled and returned his kiss with an affectionate caress. Hubert's slangy praise was dearer to her than any polished compliment from another source.

Hubert did not understand why he hated the world and things a little less as he walked to business that morning, the stone walk answering to his usual sharp, decisive step. He did not know that it was a gleam of something pure and true, of a religion not in word but in deed, that had flashed across his path and mitigated its darkness.

Winifred had a long talk alone with her father in the library later in the day. She had thought out her reasons, and understood better, herself, the instinctive feeling that led her not to resume her place in the choir under the altered conditions.

"I am just beginning to worship, Father," she said, "and I feel I could do so better out of sight—for awhile, at least. You do not know the temptation it would be to fall back into the old way. I am afraid I could not stand it. I would rather just slip into the congregation beside you, Father, and sing to God when my heart sings, and keep still when it doesn't."

So her father yielded the point to her conscience.

"God bless you, Winnie," he said with glistening eyes, as he stroked her chestnut locks. "It may be I have been a bit of an idolater, myself."

Poor Mrs. Gray sighed, and quite gave up trying to understand Winifred's strange position. She hoped she would be able to give some suitable reason for withdrawing, and not set the whole church talking about her peculiar views. She remembered hopefully that her daughter had suffered from laryngitis not long ago, and she mentally nursed the almost vanished trouble into proportions that would forbid her singing much. She was sure Dr. Lansing would give an opinion to that effect now. But, dear me! as for