Grave changes these to be found in Flossy Shipley.  Then, too, she had taken to wandering away alone in the twilight; during the short spaces between services she was nowhere to be found, but the Chautauqua bell brought her back invariably in time to make ready for the next service.  “There is certainly more to the little mouse than I ever expected before.  If Chautauqua wakes our wits as it has Flossy’s we shall have reason to bless the day that Dr. Vincent invented it.”  This Ruth heard from Marion as she roused herself from her reverie to give attention to what the girls were saying.  They had got back to a discussion of Flossy again.  It was a subject that someway annoyed Ruth, so she dismissed it, and made ready for the afternoon meeting, whither they all went.

To Marion the morning sermon had been an intellectual treat.  She had a way of listening to sermons that would have been very disheartening to the preacher if he had known of it.  She had learned how to divest herself of all personality.  The subject was one that had nothing to do with her; the application of solemn truths were for the people around her who believed in these things, but never for her; so she listened and enjoyed, just as she enjoyed a book or a picture, just as if she had no soul at all, nothing but an intellect.

It was very rare indeed that an arrow from any one’s quiver touched her.  But there was one single sentence in Dr. Pierce’s sermon that was destined to haunt her.  Said he:  “When the blind man was questioned he couldn’t argue, he didn’t try to; but he could stand up there before them and say, ‘Whereas I was blind, now I see; make the most of that.’  And wasn’t it an unanswerable argument?  There is no argument like it.  When men are honest and earnest and spiritual in Wall Street, it tells.”

Now that was just the kind of sentence to delight Marion’s heart.  The inconsistencies of Christians was one of her very strong points, she saw them bristling out everywhere, and she looked about her with a satisfied smile on her face that so large a company of them were getting so sharp a thrust as this.

And suddenly there flashed across her brain an utterly new thought.  “Whereas I was blind, now I see.”  “Perhaps,” she said to herself—­“perhaps I am blind.  What if that should be the only reason why these things are not to me as they are to others.  How do I know, after all, but there may really be a spiritual blindness, and that it may be holding me?  How do I know but that the reason some of these poor ignorant people whom I meet are so firm in their belief of Christ and heaven is because they have had just this experience?

“‘Whereas I was blind, now I see!’ How can I possibly tell but that this may be the case?  I wonder what I do think anyway?  Do I really think that all these men gathered here are either deceived or deceivers?  One or the other they must be—­and either position is too silly to sustain—­or else I must be blind.  If there should be such a thing as seeing, and I discover it too late!  If there is a too late to this thing, and I do not find it out simply because I am blind, what then?  The sun shines, of course, though I dare say an entirely blind man doesn’t believe it.  Doesn’t have an idea anyway what it is—­how can he?”