Desire was hushed all through; something living and real had thrilled into her thought; her restlessness quieted suddenly under it, as Mary stood quiet before the message of the angel.

When she did speak again, after a time, as Rachel Froke broke the motionless pause by laying the book gently back again upon the table, it was to say,—­

“Why don’t they preach like that, and leave the rest to preach itself?  A Sermon means a Word; why don’t they just say the word, and let it go?”

The Friend made no reply.

“I never could—­quite—­like that about the ‘Lamb,’ before,” said Desire, hesitatingly.  “It seemed,—­I don’t know,—­putting Him down, somehow; making him tame; taking the grandness away that made the gentleness any good.  But,—­’Tenderness;’ that is beautiful!  Does it mean so in the other place?  About taking away the sins,—­do you think?”

“’The Tenderness of God—­the Compassion—­that taketh away the sins of the world?’” Mrs. Froke repeated, half inquiringly.  “Jesus Christ, God’s Heart of Love toward man?  I think it is so.  I think, child, thee has got thy crumb also, to-day.”

But not all yet.

Pretty soon, they heard the front door open, and Uncle Titus come in.  Another step was behind his; and Kenneth Kincaid’s voice was speaking, about some book he had called to take.

Desire’s face flushed, and her manner grew suddenly flurried.

“I must go,” she said, starting up; yet when she got to the door, she paused and delayed.

The voices were talking on, in the study; somehow, Desire had last words also, to say to Mrs. Froke.

She was partly shy about going past that open door, and partly afraid they might not notice her if she did.  Back in her girlish thought was a secret suggestion that she was pushing at all the time with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few persons whom Desire Ledwith thoroughly believed in and liked.  “There was no Mig about him,” she said.  It is hazardous when a girl of seventeen makes one of her rare exceptions in her estimate of character in favor of a man of six and twenty.

Yet Desire Ledwith hated “nonsense;” she wouldn’t have anybody sending her bouquets as they did to Agatha and Florence; she had an utter contempt for lavender pantaloons and waxed moustaches; but for Kenneth Kincaid, with his honest, clear look at life, and his high strong purpose, to say friendly things,—­tell her a little now and then of how the world looked to him and what it demanded,—­this lifted her up; this made it seem worth while to speak and to hear.

So she was very glad when Uncle Titus saw her go down the hall, after she had made up her mind that that way lay her straight path, and that things contrived were not things worth happening,—­and spoke out her name, so that she had to stop, and turn to the open doorway and reply; and Kenneth Kincaid came over and held out his hand to her.  He had two books in the other,—­a volume of Bunsen and a copy of “Guild Court,”—­and he was just ready to go.