She was looking at him keenly.  After a moment his eyes fell, or rather, lifted under the look.  “She had a good home—­a God-fearing home,” he said.

But Katie did not let go her look.  He had to come back to it, and he shifted.  Did he have it in him remotely, unavowedly, to suspect?

It would seem so, for he continued his argument, as if meeting something.  He repeated that she had a good home.  He enumerated her blessings.

But when he paused it was to find Katie looking at him in just the same way.  It forced him to an unwilling, uneasy:  “What more could a girl want?”

“What she wanted,” said Katie passionately, “was life.”

The word spoken as Katie spoke it had suggestion of unholy things.  “But God is life,” he said.

Suddenly Katie’s eyes blazed.  “God!  Well it’s my opinion that you know just as little about Him as you do about ‘life.’”

It was doubtless the most dumbfounded moment of the Reverend Saunders’ life.  His jaw dropped.  But only to come together the tighter.  “Young woman,” said he, “I am a servant of God.  I have served Him all my days.”

“Heaven pity Him!” said Katie, and rocked and her chair squeaked savagely.

He rose.  “I cannot permit such language to be used in my house.”

Katie gave no heed.  “I’ll tell you why your daughter left.  She left because you starved her.

“Above your head is a motto.  The motto says, ‘God Is Love.’  I could almost fancy somebody hung that in this house as a joke!

“You see you don’t know anything about love.  That’s why you don’t know anything about God—­or life—­or Ann.

“In this universe of mysterious things,” Katie went on, “it so happened—­as you have remarked, God’s ways are indeed inscrutable—­that unto you was born a child ordained for love.”

She paused, held herself by the mystery of that.

And as she contemplated the mystery of it her wrath against him fell strangely away.  Telling him what she thought of him suddenly ceased to be the satisfying thing she had anticipated.  It was all too mysterious.

It grew so large and so strange that it did not seem a matter the Reverend Saunders had much to do with it.  Telling him what she thought of him was not the thing interesting her then.  What interested her was wondering why he was as he was.  How it had all happened.  What it all meant.

Her wondering almost drew her to him; certainly it gave her a new approach.  “Oh isn’t it a pity!” was what Katie said next.  And there was pain and feeling and almost sympathy in her voice as she repeated, “Isn’t it a pity!”

He, too, spoke differently—­more humanly.  “Isn’t—­what a pity?”

“That we bungle it so!  That we don’t seem to know anything about each other.

“Why I suppose you didn’t know—­you simply didn’t have it in you to know—­that the way she needed to serve God was by laughing and dancing!”