Mr. Weldon certainly bore no malice, but he always pronounced Claude’s name exactly like the word “Clod,” which annoyed him.  To be sure, Enid pronounced his name in the same way, but either Claude did not notice this, or did not mind it from her.  He sank into a deep, dark sofa, and sat with his driving cap on his knee while Brother Weldon drew a chair up to the one open window of the dusky room and began to read Carrie Royce’s letters.  Without being asked to do so, he read them aloud, and stopped to comment from time to time.  Claude observed with disappointment that Enid drank in all his platitudes just as Mrs. Wheeler did.  He had never looked at Weldon so long before.  The light fell full on the young man’s pear-shaped head and his thin, rippled hair.  What in the world could sensible women like his mother and Enid Royce find to admire in this purring, white-necktied fellow?  Enid’s dark eyes rested upon him with an expression of profound respect.  She both looked at him and spoke to him with more feeling than she ever showed toward Claude.

“You see, Brother Weldon,” she said earnestly, “I am not naturally much drawn to people.  I find it hard to take the proper interest in the church work at home.  It seems as if I had always been holding myself in reserve for the foreign field,—­by not making personal ties, I mean.  If Gladys Farmer went to China, everybody would miss her.  She could never be replaced in the High School.  She has the kind of magnetism that draws people to her.  But I have always been keeping myself free to do what Carrie is doing.  There I know I could be of use.”

Claude saw it was not easy for Enid to talk like this.  Her face looked troubled, and her dark eyebrows came together in a sharp angle as she tried to tell the young preacher exactly what was going on in her mind.  He listened with his habitual, smiling attention, smoothing the paper of the folded letter pages and murmuring, “Yes, I understand.  Indeed, Miss Enid?”

When she pressed him for advice, he said it was not always easy to know in what field one could be most useful; perhaps this very restraint was giving her some spiritual discipline that she particularly needed.  He was careful not to commit himself, not to advise anything unconditionally, except prayer.

“I believe that all things are made clear to us in prayer, Miss Enid.”

Enid clasped her hands; her perplexity made her features look sharper.  “But it is when I pray that I feel this call the strongest.  It seems as if a finger were pointing me over there.  Sometimes when I ask for guidance in little things, I get none, and only get the feeling that my work lies far away, and that for it, strength would be given me.  Until I take that road, Christ withholds himself.”