while on the bank all her white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow.  The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own.  She thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose one of them had been in her position!  ’Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest?  I wouldn’t no, I wouldn’t,’ she thought; ‘I should have understood!’ But she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought.  Instinctively she felt the painter right.  One who acted differently from others, was lost.

She told her father of the encounter, adding: 

“I expect he’ll come, Daddy.”

Pierson answered dreamily:  “Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he does.”

“And you’ll sit to him, won’t you?”

“My dear—­I?”

“He’s lonely, you know, and people aren’t nice to him.  Isn’t it hateful that people should hurt others, because they’re foreign or different?”

She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on:  “I know you think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren’t, of course.”

“That’s not exactly charitable, Nollie.”

“You know they’re not.  I think sin often just means doing things differently.  It’s not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that doesn’t prevent people condemning you, does it?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Nollie.”

Noel bit her lips, and murmured:  “Are you sure we’re really Christians, Daddy?”

The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took refuge in an attempt at wit.  “I should like notice of that question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament.”

“That means you don’t.”

Pierson flushed.  “We’re fallible enough; but, don’t get such ideas into your head, my child.  There’s a lot of rebellious talk and writing in these days....”

Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  “I think,” she said, looking straight before her, and speaking to the air, “that Christianity is what you do, not what you think or say.  And I don’t believe people can be Christians when they act like others—­I mean, when they join together to judge and hurt people.”

Pierson rose and paced the room.  “You have not seen enough of life to talk like that,” he said.  But Noel went on: 

“One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of conscientious objectors—­it was horrible.  Why do they treat them like that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it’s fear which makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they’re hundreds to one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world couldn’t be so awfully brutal.  I don’t see much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones.”