“I wish he was dead!”

“He who in his heart—­” there was verse and chapter for it.  Joan was a murderess.  Just as well, so far as Joan was concerned, might she have taken a carving-knife and stabbed Deacon Hornflower to the heart.

Joan’s prayers that night, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Munday’s sobs, had a hopeless air of unreality about them.  Mrs. Munday’s kiss was cold.

How long Joan lay and tossed upon her little bed she could not tell.  Somewhere about the middle of the night, or so it seemed to her, the frenzy seized her.  Flinging the bedclothes away she rose to her feet.  It is difficult to stand upon a spring mattress, but Joan kept her balance.  Of course He was there in the room with her.  God was everywhere, spying upon her.  She could distinctly hear His measured breathing.  Face to face with Him, she told Him what she thought of Him.  She told Him He was a cruel, wicked God.

There are no Victoria Crosses for sinners, or surely little Joan that night would have earned it.  It was not lack of imagination that helped her courage.  God and she alone, in the darkness.  He with all the forces of the Universe behind Him.  He armed with His eternal pains and penalties, and eight-year-old Joan:  the creature that He had made in His Own Image that He could torture and destroy.  Hell yawned beneath her, but it had to be said.  Somebody ought to tell Him.

“You are a wicked God,” Joan told Him.  “Yes, You are.  A cruel, wicked God.”

And then that she might not see the walls of the room open before her, hear the wild laughter of the thousand devils that were coming to bear her off, she threw herself down, her face hidden in the pillow, and clenched her hands and waited.

And suddenly there burst a song.  It was like nothing Joan had ever heard before.  So clear and loud and near that all the night seemed filled with harmony.  It sank into a tender yearning cry throbbing with passionate desire, and then it rose again in thrilling ecstasy:  a song of hope, of victory.

Joan, trembling, stole from her bed and drew aside the blind.  There was nothing to be seen but the stars and the dim shape of the hills.  But still that song, filling the air with its wild, triumphant melody.

Years afterwards, listening to the overture to Tannhauser, there came back to her the memory of that night.  Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims’ onward march.  So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song of Life.  Through the dim aeons of man’s savage infancy; through the centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale’s song:  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.  We will build a nest.  We will rear our brood.  I love you.  I love you.  Life shall not die.”