“Much happier than you are,” Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from side to side as if to negative contradiction in advance.  She smiled too; it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness.

“Of course you are—­of course!” Miss Howe acknowledged.  The words were mellow and vibrant; her voice seemed to dwell upon them with a kind of rich affection.  Her face covered itself with serious sweetness.  “I can imagine the beatitudes you feel—­by your clothes.”

The girl drew her feet under her, and her hand went up to the only semi-conventional item of her attire.  It was a brooch that exclaimed in silver letters “Glory to His Name!” “It is the dress of the Army in this country,” she said; “I would not change it for the wardrobe of a queen.”

“That’s just what I mean.”  Miss Howe leaned back in her chair with her head among its cushions, and sent her words fluently across the room, straight and level with the glance from between her half-closed eyelids.  A fine sensuous appreciation of the indolence it was possible to enjoy in the East clung about her.  “To live on a plane that lifts you up like that—­so that you can defy all criticism and all convention, and go about the streets like a mark of exclamation at the selfishness of the world—­there must be something very consummate in it or you couldn’t go on.  At least I couldn’t.”

“I suppose I do look odd to you.”  Her voice took a curious, soft, uplifted note.  “I wear three garments only—­the garments of my sisters who plant the young shoots in the rice-fields, and carry bricks for the building of rich men’s houses, and gather the dung of the roadways to burn for fuel.  If the Army is to conquer India it must march bare-footed and bare-headed all the way.  All the way,” Laura repeated, with a tremor of musical sadness.  Her eyes were fixed in appeal upon the other woman’s.  “And if the sun beats down upon my uncovered head, I think, ’It struck more fiercely upon Calvary’; and if the way is sharp to my unshod feet, I say, ’At least I have no cross to bear.’” The last words seemed almost a chant, and her voice glided from them into singing—­

     “The blessed Saviour died for me,
      On the cross!  On the cross! 
      He bore my sins at Calvary,
      On the rugged cross!”

She sang softly, her body thrust a little forward in a tender swaying—­

     “Behold His hands and feet and side,
      The crown of thorns, the crimson tide,
      ‘Forgive them, Father!’ loud He cried,
      On the rugged cross!”

“Oh, thank you!” Miss Howe exclaimed.  Then she murmured again, “That’s just what I mean.”

A blankness came over the girl’s face as a light cloud will cross the moon.  She regarded Hilda from behind it, with penetrant anxiety.  “Did you really enjoy that hymn?” she asked.

“Indeed I did.”

“Then, dear Miss Howe, I think you cannot be very far from the Kingdom.”