"This _must_ be the heritage a woman should be able to give her children,
or she has no right to her own love. God has been so good to me--he has
not asked for sacrifice; but"--here she spoke fiercely--"I was ready to
sacrifice my love--for I had seen my friend's baby!

"I had never known God before as I know him now. He came to me with love
and faith and my glorious life. Before, my God was a prayer-book God; a
dead thing that only rustled when we touched him; and now, oh! Cilla, he
is alive and breathing in good men and women, in little children, in all
the beautiful, real things. They did not bury my God, or yours, long ago;
they only set him free for us to find and love and follow."

They clung to each other in a passion of reverence and happiness, and
then kissed each other good night.




CHAPTER XXII


"My girl," said Travers a week later, "how shall it be? May I tell every
one how madly happy I am? May I take you to that little shrine a mile up
the mountain yonder and make you--mine--and then show them all _why_ I
am so happy? Or----"

"Yes. Or----" Priscilla lay quite contentedly in his arms, her eyes on
the shining outlines of The Ghost.