And the weeks went on towards Lent.  Anne longed for the time of cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days.

She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour’s for All Souls.  She loved the grey old church in the market-place.  Set in the midst of that sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour’s perpetuated for her the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith.  When she desired to forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb tradition, she went to St. Saviour’s.  When she wished to be stirred and strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine forces centring on her, she went to All Souls.

On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent personal mood.  In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon’s church.

She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning, and more evidently unhappy.  She went alone.  Majendie had admitted lately that he liked going to St. Saviour’s, but he refused to accompany her to All Souls.

She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great illumination.  It came with the Collect for the day.  Anne was deeply moved by the Collect.  She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the sources of her spiritual help.  Her light went up with the ascending, sentence by sentence, of the prayer.

“Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth;

“Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues;

“Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee;

“Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ’s sake.”  The ritual rang upon that note.  The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light that penetrated her, poignant, but tender.

Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation.

There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen to their vicar.

“Though I speak,’” said the Canon, “’with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal.”

He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words, “angels,” and “cymbal.”  He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent.  “The Church,” he said, “has such care for her children that she does nothing by hazard.  This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil.  Why, but that those among us who come off victors may have mercy upon those