Haynerd bowed and smiled. "You have me correctly classified," he said. "I'm a Yankee, and from Missouri."

"And now, having placed us," said the Beaubien, "how will you classify Carmen?"

Father Waite looked at the girl reverently. "Hers is the leaven," he replied gently, "which has leavened the whole lump.

"My good friends," he went on earnestly, "like all priests and preachers, I have been but a helpless spectator of humanity's troubles. I have longed and prayed to know how to do the works which Jesus is said to have done; yet, at the sick-bed or the couch of death, what could I do—I, to whom the apostolic virtue is supposed to have descended in the long line of succession? I could anoint with holy oil. I could make signs, and pray. I could give promises of remitted sins—though I knew I spoke not truth. I could comfort by voicing the insipid views of our orthodox heaven. And yet I know that what I gave was but mental nostrums, narcotics, to stupify until death might end the suffering. Is that serving Christ? Is that Christianity? Alas, no!"

"And if you were a good orthodox priest," interposed Haynerd, "you would refuse burial to dissenters, and bar from your communion table all who were not of your faith, eh?"

"Yes," sadly. "I would have to, were I consistent; for Catholicism is the only true faith, founded upon the revealed word of God, you know." He smiled pathetically as he looked around at the little group.

"Now," he continued, "you, Mr. Haynerd, are a man of the world. You are not in sympathy with the Church. You are an infidel, an unbeliever. And therefore are you 'anathema,' you know." He laughed as he went on. "But you can not deny that at times you think very seriously. And, I may go farther: you long, intensely, for something that the world does not offer. Now, what is it but truth that you are seeking?"

"I want to know," answered Haynerd quickly. "I want to be shown. I am fond of exhibitions of sleight-of-hand and jugglery. But the priestly thaumaturgy that claims to transform a biscuit into the flesh of a man dead some two thousand years, and a bit of grape juice into his blood, irritates me inexpressibly! And so does the jugglery by which your Protestant fellows, Hitt, attempt to reconcile their opposite beliefs. Why, what difference can it possibly make to the Almighty whether we miserable little beings down here are baptised with water, milk, or kerosene, or whether we are immersed, sprinkled, or well soused? Good heavens! for nearly twenty centuries you have been wandering among the non-essentials. Isn't it time to get down to business, and instead of burning at the stake every one who differs with you, try conscientiously to put into practice a few of the simple moral precepts, such as the Golden Rule, and loving one's neighbor as one's self?"

"There," commented Father Waite, "you have a bit of the world's opinion of the Church! Can we say that the censure is not just? Would not Christ himself to-day speak even more scathingly to those who advocate a system of belief that puts blinders on men's minds, and then leads them into the pit of ignorance and superstition?"

"Ye have taken away the key of knowledge," murmured Carmen; "ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

"Just so!" exclaimed Haynerd, looking at the girl who stood as a living protest against all that hampers the expansion of the human mind; that quenches its note of joy, and dulls its enlarging and ever nobler concept of God. "Now I want to know, first, if there is a God; and, if so, what He is, and what His relation is to me. I want to know what I am, and why I am here, and what future I may look forward to, if any. I don't care two raps about a God who can't help me here on earth, who can't set me right and make me happy—cure my ills, meet my needs, and supply a few of the luxuries as well. And if there is a God, and we can meet Him only by dying, then why in the name of common sense all this hullabaloo about death? Why, in that case, death is the grandest thing in life! And I'm for committing suicide right away! But you preacher fellows fight death tooth and nail. You're scared stiff when you contemplate it. You make Christianity just a grand preparation for death. Yet it isn't the gateway to life to you, and you know it! Then why, if you are honest, do you tell such rubbish to your trusting followers?"

"I would remind you," returned Hitt with a little laugh, "that I don't, now."

"Well, friends," interposed Father Waite, "it is to take up for earnest consideration just such questions as Mr. Haynerd propounds, that I have my suggestion to make, namely, that we meet together once or twice a week, or as often as we may agree upon, to search for—" his voice dropped to a whisper—"to search for God, and with this young girl as our guide. For I believe she is very close to Him. The world knows God only by hearsay. Carmen has proved Him.

"Men ask why it is," he went on, "that God remains hidden from them; why they can not understand Him. They forget that Jesus revealed God as Love. And, if that is so, in order to know Him all mankind must love their fellow-men. But they go right on hating one another, cheating, abusing, robbing, slaying, persecuting, and still wondering why they don't know God, regardless of the only possible way of ever working out from the evils by which they are beset, if we believe that Jesus told the truth, or was correctly reported." He paused and reflected for a moment. Then:

"The ancient prophet said: 'Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your hearts.' It is my proposal that we bind ourselves together in such a search. To it we can bring diverse talents. To our vast combined worldly experience, I bring knowledge of the ancient Greek and Latin Fathers, together with Church history. Mr. Hitt brings his command of the Hebrew language and history, and an intimate acquaintance with the ancient manuscripts, and Biblical interpretation, together with a wide knowledge of the physical sciences. Madam Beaubien, Miss Wall, and Mr. Haynerd contribute their earnest, searching, inquisitive spirit, and a knowledge of the world's needs. Moreover, we all come together without bias or prejudice. And Carmen—she contributes that in which we have all been so woefully lacking, and without which we can never know God, the rarest, deepest spirituality. She is a living proof of her faith. Shall we undertake the search, my friends? It means a study of her thought, and the basis upon which it rests."

The Beaubien raised her hand to her moist eyes. She was thinking of that worldly coterie which formerly was wont to meet nightly in her magnificent mansion to prey upon their fellows. Oh, how different the spirit of this little gathering!

"You will meet here, with me," she said in a broken voice. "I ask it."

There were none there unacquainted with the sorrows of this penitent, broken woman. Each rose in turn and clasped her hand. Carmen threw her arms about her neck and kissed her repeatedly.

"You see," said the Beaubien, smiling up through her tears, "what this child's religion is? Would the swinging of incense burners and the mumbling of priestly formulae enhance it?"

"Jesus said, 'Having seen me ye have seen God,'" said Father Waite.

"And I say," replied the Beaubien, "that having seen this child, you have indeed seen Him."



CHAPTER 2

"I'm afraid," Haynerd was saying, as he and Father Waite were wending their way to the Beaubien home a few evenings later, "that this Carmen is the kind of girl you read about in sentimental novels; the kind who are always just ready to step into heaven, but who count for little in the warfare and struggle of actual mundane existence. You get me? She isn't quite true to life, you know, as a book critic would say of an impossible heroine."

"You mistake, my friend," replied Father Waite warmly. "She is the very kind we would see oftener, were it not for the belief that years bring wisdom, and so, as a consequence, the little child is crushed beneath a load of false beliefs and human laws that make it reflect its mortal parents, rather than its heavenly one."

"But I'd like to see her under stress—"

"Under stress! Good heavens, man! You haven't the slightest conception of the stress she's been under most of her life! But your criticism unconsciously pays her the highest tribute, for her kind never show by word, deed, or look what they are enduring. That frail-appearing girl has stood up under loads that would have flattened you and me out like gold leaf!"

"Well, she doesn't look it!" protested Haynerd tenaciously.

"Of course she doesn't! Her kind never do! She's so far and away ahead of mortals like you and me that she doesn't admit the reality and power of evil—and, believe me, she's got her reasons for not admitting it, too! Don't presume to judge her yet. Only try humbly to attain a little of her understanding and faith; and try to avoid making yourself ridiculous by criticising what you do not comprehend. That, indeed, has been mankind's age-long blunder—and they have thereby made asses of themselves!"

Edward Haynerd, or "Ned," as he was invariably known, prided himself on being something of a philosopher. And in the name of philosophy he chose to be quixotic. That one who hated the dissimulations and shams of our class aristocracy so cordially should have earned his livelihood—and a good one, too—as publisher of the Social Era, a sprightly weekly chronicle of happenings in fashionable society, would have appeared anomalous in any but a man gifted in the Greek sophistries and their modern innumerable and arid offshoots. Haynerd was a laughing Democritus, an easy-going, even-tempered fellow, doomed to be loved, and by the same graces thoroughly cheated by the world in general. He had in his rapid career of some thirty-five years dipped deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, sputtering and blowing, with his face well smeared with mud from the shallow depths. Whereupon he remarked that such an existence was a poor way of serving the Lord, and turned cynic. His wit was his saving grace. It was likewise his capital and stock-in-trade. By it he won a place for himself in the newspaper world, and later, as a credit asset, had employed it successfully in negotiating for the Social Era. It taking over the publication of this sheet he had remarked that life was altogether too short to permit of attempting anything worth while; and so he forthwith made no further assaults upon fame—assuming that he had ever done so—but settled comfortably down to the enjoyment of his sinecure. He had never married. And as justification for his self-imposed celibacy he pompously quoted Kant: "I am a bachelor, and I could not cease to be a bachelor without a disturbance that would be intolerable to me." Yet he was not a misogynist. He simply shirked responsibility and ease-threatening risk.

"You see," he remarked, explaining himself later to Carmen, "I'm a pseudo-litterateur—I conduct a 'Who's It?' for the quidnunces of this blase old burg. And I really meet a need by furnishing an easy method of suicide, for my little vanity sheet is a sort of social mirror, that all who look therein may die of laughter. By the way, I had to run those base squibs about you; but, by George! I'm going to make a retraction in next Saturday's issue. I'll put a crimp in friend Ames that'll make him squeal. I'll say he has ten wives, and eight of 'em Zulus, at that!"

"Don't, please!" laughed Carmen. "We have enough to meet, without going out of our way to stir up more. Let it all work out now, as it will, in the right way."

"In the right way, eh? Is that part of your doctrine? Say, don't you think that in formulating a new religion you're carrying coals to Newcastle? Seems to me we've got enough now, if we'd practice 'em."

"My religion, Mr. Haynerd, is only the practice of the teachings of a Nazarene Jew, named Jesus," she replied gently.

"Well, my religion is Socialism, I guess," he said lightly.

"So's mine," she quickly returned. "I'm a thorough Socialist. So we meet on common ground, don't we?" She held out her hand, and he took it, a puzzled expression coming into his face.

"Well," he said, glancing about, "we'll have to dispute that later. I see Father Waite is about to open this little religious seminar. But we'll get back to the discussion of myself," he added, his eyes twinkling. "For, like Thoreau, I prefer to discuss that subject, because there's no other about which I know so much."

"Nor so little," she added, laughing and squeezing his hand as she turned from him.

The little coterie took their places around the dining room table, which was well strewn with books of reference and writing materials. Father Waite rapped gently for order. A deep, reverent silence fell upon the group. They had begun their search for God.

"Friends," began Father Waite slowly, "we are inaugurating to-night a mission of the most profound significance. No question so vitally touches the human race as the one which we shall reverently discuss in this and subsequent meetings. I thought as I came in here to-night of the wisdom of Epictitus, who said, 'What do I want? To acquaint myself with the true order of things and comply with it.' I am sure no statement so fully expresses our common desire as that."

"Just so!" interrupted Haynerd. "If Adam was a Baptist, I want to know and comply with the fact."

A general laugh followed. Then Father Waite held up a hand and again became serious.

"Can we treat lightly even the Adam story, when we consider how much misery and rancor its literal acceptance has caused among mankind? No. Out of deepest sympathy for a world in search of truth, let us pity their stumblings, and take heed that we fall not ourselves."

He paused. A hush lay upon the room. Carmen's hand stole toward the Beaubien's and clasped it tightly.

"In these days, as of old, it is still said, 'There is no God!' And yet, though the ignorant and wilful admit it not, mankind's very existence is a function of their concept of a Creator, a sole cause of all that is. No question, economic, social, political, or other, is so vitally related to humanity as this: 'Is there a God?' And the corollary: 'What is His relation to me?' For there can be nothing so important as a knowledge of truth. Can the existence of a God be demonstrated? Can He be shown to be beneficent, in view of the world's testimony? What is our source of truth? If the Bible, then can its authenticity be established? The greatest of our so-called civilizations are known as Christian. But who can say by them what Christianity really is?"

"I am quite prepared to say what it is not!" again interrupted Haynerd.

"Doubtless," resumed Father Waite. "And so are we all. But at present we are seeking constructive criticism, not solely destructive. There has been quite enough of that sort in the world. But, to go a step further, can we say positively that the truth is to be found even in Christianity?"

"Please explain your question," said Miss Wall, with a puzzled look.

"The first essential is always facts," he continued. "The deduction of right conclusions will follow—provided, as Matthew Arnold so tersely said, we have sufficient delicacy of perception, subtlety, wisdom, and tact. And, I may add, sufficient freedom from prejudice and mental bias—ah, there is the stumbling block!"

"Matthew Arnold," ventured Haynerd, "was dubbed a first-class infidel, as I recall it."

"Doubtless. As have been many of the world's most earnest searchers. Yet he enunciated much truth, which we to-day are acknowledging. But, to resume, since Christianity as we know it is based upon the personality of a man, Jesus, we ask: Can the historicity of Jesus be established?"

"What! Do you mean: did he ever live?" queried Miss Wall in greater surprise than before.

"Yes. And if so, is he correctly reported in what we call the Gospels? Then, did he reveal the truth to his followers? And, lastly, has that truth been correctly transmitted to us?"

"And," added Hitt, "there is still the question: Assuming that he gave us the truth, can we apply it successfully to the meeting of our daily needs?"

"The point is well taken," replied Father Waite. "For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now," he went on, "we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. If we conclude that there is a God, we are confronted with the material universe and man. Did He create them? And what are their natures and import?"

"Well!" ejaculated Haynerd. "Seems to me you've cut out a large assignment for this little party. Those are questions that the world has played football with for thousands of years. Do you think we can settle them in a few evenings' study? I think I'll be excused!"

"No! We can't spare you," laughed Father Waite. Then he glanced at Carmen, who had sat quiet, apparently unhearing, during the remarks. "I think you will hear things soon that will set you thinking," he said. "But now we are going to let our traveled friend, Mr. Hitt, give us just a word in summation of his thought regarding the modern world and its attitude toward the questions which we have been propounding."

The explorer leaned back in his chair and assumed his customary attitude when in deep thought. All eyes turned upon him in eager expectation.

"The world," he began reflectively, "presents to me to-day the most interesting aspect it has assumed since history began. True, the age is one of great mental confusion. Quite as true, startling discoveries and astounding inventions have so upset our staid old mediaeval views that the world is hurriedly crowding them out, together with its God. Doctrines for which our fathers bled and burned are to-day lightly tossed upon the ash heap. The searchlight is turned never so mercilessly upon the founder of the Christian religion, and upon the manuscripts which relate his words and deeds. Yet most of us have grown so busy—I often wonder with what—that we have no time for that which can not be grasped as we run. We work desperately by day, building up the grandest material fabric the world has ever seen; and at night we repair the machine for the next day's run. Even our college professors bewail the lack of time for solid reading and research. And if our young pursue studies, it is with the almost exclusive thought of education as a means of earning a material livelihood later, and, if possible, rearing a mansion and stocking its larder and garage. It is, I repeat, a grandly materialistic age, wherein, to the casual observer, spirituality is at a very low ebb."

He thrust his long legs under the table and cast his eyes upward to the ceiling as he resumed:

"The modern world is still in its spiritual infancy, and does not often speak the name of God. Not that we are so much irreverent as that we feel no special need of Him in our daily pursuits. Since we ceased to tremble at the thunders of Sinai, and their lingering echoes in bulls and heresy condemnations, we find that we get along just as well—indeed, much better. And it really is quite bad form now to speak continually of God, or to refer to Him as anything real and vital. To be on such terms of intimacy with Him as this girl Carmen is—in thought, at least—would be regarded to-day as evidence of sentimentalism and weakness."

He paused again, to marshal his thought and give his auditors an opportunity for comment. Then, as the silence remained unbroken, he continued:

"Viewing the world from one standpoint, it has achieved remarkable success in applying the knout to superstition and limitation. But, like a too energetic housekeeper, it has swept out much that is essential with the debris. When spirituality ceases to be real or vital to a people, then a grave danger threatens them. Materiality has never proved a blessing, as history shows. Life that is made up of strain and ceaseless worry is not life. The incessant accumulation of material wealth, when we do not know how really to enjoy it, is folly. To pamper the flesh, to the complete ignoring of the spirit, is suicide. The increased hankering after physical excitements and animal pleasures, to the utter abandonment of the search for that which is real and satisfying, is an exhibition of gross, mesmeric stupidity, to say the least. It shows that our sense of life is awry."

"But the world is surely attempting its own betterment," protested Haynerd.

"I grant you that," replied Hitt. "But legislation and coercion are the wrong means to employ. They restrain, but they do not cure. They are only narcotics."

"Oh, well, you are not going to change the race until the individual himself changes."

"Have I disputed that?" said Hitt. "Quite the contrary, that is the pith of my observations. Reform is a hearthside affair. And no sane man will maintain that general reform can ever come until the individual's needs are met—his daily, hourly, worldly needs."

"I think I get your point," said Father Waite. "It is wholly a question of man's concept of the cause of things, himself included, and their purpose and end, is it not?"

"Quite so," replied Hitt. "The restless spirit of the modern world is hourly voicing its discontent with a faltering faith which has no other basis than blind belief. It wants demonstrable fact upon which to build. In plain words, mankind would be better if they but knew how!"

"Well, we show them how," asserted Haynerd. "But they don't do as we tell 'em."

"Are you quite sure that you show them how?" asked Hitt. "What do you ever do toward showing them how permanently to eradicate a single human difficulty?"

"Oh, well, putting it that way, nothing, of course."

"Quite so, my friend. The relief we afford is but temporary. And so the world continues to wait for surcease from woe in a life beyond the grave. But now, returning to our survey, let me say that amid all the folly of vain pursuits, of wars and strife, of doleful living and pitiable dying, there are more encouraging and hopeful signs hung out to the inquiring thought to-day than ever before in history. If I misread not, we are already entered upon changes so tremendous that their end must be the revolutionizing of thought and conduct, and hence of life. Our present age is one of great extremes: though we touch the depths, we are aiming likewise at the heights. I doubt if there ever was a time when so many sensed the nothingness of the pleasures of the flesh. I doubt if ever there was such a quickening of the business conscience, and such a determined desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to the Church. There is a tremendous world-yearning to know and to do better. And what is its cause? I answer, a growing appreciation of the idea that 'the kingdom of harmony is within you.'"

"Jesus said that," murmured Carmen, looking up.

"He but amplified and gave form to the great fact that there was an influence for better things always existent in the ancient Jews, that 'something not ourselves,' if you will, 'that makes for righteousness.' And he showed that that influence could be outwardly externalized in freedom from the ills which beset humanity."

"Very good," put in Haynerd. "And then, what?"

"That 'something not ourselves' is the germ of the true idea of God," answered Hitt.

"Which makes God—?"

"Wholly mental."

"Spirit?"

"Mind," offered Carmen.

"The terms are synonymous," said Hitt. "And now let me conclude with a final observation. Mankind's beliefs are in a whirl. Ecclesiasticism is dying. Orthodoxy and conservatism are hanging desperately to the world's flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater than that concerning God. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the scrap heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant damnation. The idea of a God who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally present. Nay, more, available for all our problems and needs. And the end will be the adoption of that conception, enlarged and purified still further, and taken into the minutest affairs of our daily life—as this girl has done. The day of patient suffering in this world, under the spell of a promise of compensating reward in the heavenly future, has all but passed. We are gradually becoming conscious of the stupendous fact that the kingdom of all harmony, immortality, and good, is right here within us—and therefore can be naught but a consciousness of absolute good, perfectly attainable by humanity as the 'old man' of Paul is laid off, but not gained, necessarily, through what we call death."

The silence which followed was broken at length by Miss Wall. "And what constitutes the 'old man'?" she asked.

"Largely, I think," said Hitt, "the belief that matter is real."

"What?" exclaimed Haynerd, almost rising from his chair. "Matter, real?"

Hitt laughed. "I stand on my statement," he replied.

Father Waite rose slowly, as if lost in thought. "History shows," he said, meditatively, "that man's progress has been proportionate to his freedom from the limitation of ignorance and undemonstrable belief. And that freedom has come as man's concept of God has grown less and less material, and more and more spiritual. From the animal nature of the savage, to whom all is matter, down—or up—to the man of to-day, to whom mind is assuming ever greater ascendency, man's progress has been marked by a throwing off of limiting beliefs, theological or other, in material power and substance. The development of the least material forces, steam, electricity, the X-ray, has come only as the human mind has thrown off a portion of its hampering material beliefs. I am astounded when I think of it, and of its marvelous message to future generations! For, from the premise that the creator of all things is spirit, or mind, as you will, comes the corollary that the creation itself must of necessity be mental. And from this come such deductions as fairly make me tremble. Carmen has told me of the deductions which her tutor, the priest Jose, drew from the single premise that the universe is infinite in extent—a premise which I think we all will accept."

"There can be no question about it," said Hitt, nodding his head.

"Well," continued Father Waite, "that granted, we must likewise grant its creator to be infinite, must we not?"

"Certainly."

"And that puts the creator out of the matter-class entirely. The creator must be—"

"Mind," said Carmen, supplying the thought ever-present with her.

"I see no other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect in every part."

"Perhaps it is already disintegrating, and that's what causes the evil in the world," hazarded Haynerd.

"Utterly untenable, my friend," put in Hitt. "For, granted an infinite mind, we must grant the concomitant fact that such a mind is of very necessity omnipotent, as well as perfect. What, then, could ever cause disintegration in it?"

"You are right," resumed Father Waite. "And such a mind, of very necessity perfect, omnipotent, and, of course, ever-present, must likewise be eternal. For there would be nothing to contest its existence. Age, decay, and death would be unknown to it. And so would evil."

"And that," said Carmen, rising, "is my God."

Father Waite nodded significantly to the others, and sat down, leaving the girl facing them, her luminous eyes looking off into unfathomed distances, and her face aglow with spiritual light.

"My God is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown," she said. "And good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence, truth, life, and love—none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day know. Yes, my God is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of God himself. And that grandest idea is—man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine. But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. That man is God's own idea of Himself. He is God's image and likeness. He is God's reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit."

"Then, Carmen," said Father Waite, "you believe all things to be mental?"

"Yes, everything—man himself—and matter."

"But, if God is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical man. Is it not so?"

"No," returned the girl emphatically. "Did not Jesus speak often of the one lie about his Father, God? The material man and the material universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition; not real. All evil is contained in that supposition—a supposition that there is power and life and substance apart from God."

"But who made the supposition?" queried Haynerd.

"A supposition is not made," replied Carmen quietly. "Its existence is suppositional."

"I don't quite get that," interposed Miss Wall, her brows knitting.

Carmen smiled down at the inquiring woman. "Listen," she said. "The creator of all things is mind. You admit that. But you would have that mind the creator of evil, also. Yet, your own reasoning has shown that, on the premise of mind as infinite, such mind must be forever whole, harmonious, perfect. The thoughts and ideas by which that mind expresses itself must be likewise pure and perfect. Then that creative mind can not create evil. For, a mind that creates evil must itself be evil. And, being infinite, such a mind must include the evil it creates. We would have, then, either a mind wholly evil, or one of mixed evil and good. In either case, that mind must then destroy itself. Am I not right?"

"Your reasoning is, certainly," admitted Miss Wall. "But, how to account for evil, when God is infinite good—"

"To account for it at all," replied Carmen, "would be to make it something real. Jesus would account for it only by classing it as a lie about God. Now God, as the creative mind, must likewise be truth, since He is perfection and harmony. Very well, a lie is always the opposite of truth. Evil is the direct opposite of good."

"Yes," said Father Waite, nodding his head as certain bright memories returned to him. "That is what you told me that day when I first talked with you. And it started a new line of thought."

"Is it strange that God should have a suppositional opposite?" asked Carmen. "Has not everything with which you are concerned a suppositional opposite? God is truth. His suppositional opposite is the great lie of evil. God is good. Hence the same opposite. God is spirit. The suppositional opposite is matter. And matter is just as mental as the thoughts which you are now holding. God is real. Good is real. And so, evil and the lie are unreal."

"The distinction seems to me theoretical," protested Miss Wall.

Hitt then took the floor. "That word 'real,'" he said, "is perhaps what is causing your confusion. The real is that which, according to Spencer, does not pass away. We used to believe matter indestructible, forever permanent. We learn that our views regarding it were very incorrect. Matter is quite destructible."

"And yet," said Father Waite, "in this universe of constant change, something endures. What is it but the mind that is God, expressing itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life, power?"

"Exactly," replied Hitt. "But now we have been brought back again to the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not real substance, we will have established Carmen's premise that everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between the mind that is God, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in assuming that the creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man. Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful voice."

A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven for earth.



CHAPTER 3

With her exit from the beau monde and her entrance upon the broad stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the lethargy which her abrupt transition from mediaeval Simiti into the modern world had occasioned. The static struggle to hold her own against the rushing currents of materialism had turned at length in her favor. Her lamp had been kept alight. The lethal influences which rose about her like stupifying fumes in the courts of fashion had been lifted and swept away by the fresher and more invigorating breezes into which her bark had now been drawn.

She plunged into her new work joyously; yet not without a deeper comprehension of its meaning than that of her fellow-students. She knew that the University was but another stepping-stone, even as her social life had been; another series of calls and opportunities to "prove" her God to be immanent good. And she thankfully accepted its offerings. For she was keenly alive to the materialistic leadings of the "higher education," and she would stand as a living protest against them.

It had not taken her long to discover the impotence lying at the heart of so-called modern education. She had not been slow to mark the disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one's daily bread according to the infamous code of the world's carnal social system. The University did not meet the most urgent need of the race by equipping men to stand against the great crises of human experience. It did not teach men to lay aside the counterfeit man of material sense; but rather emphasized the world's belief in the reality of this man by minutely detailed courses in his mundane history and the manifestations of his pitiable ignorance in his wanton crimes and watery ambitions. To Carmen, God was the most insistent fact of creation. And mankind's existence could find its only justification in ceaseless, consecrated manifestation of His harmonious activity. True, the University vaguely recognized God as infinitely competent. But in the same breath it confessed its utter ignorance of a demonstrable knowledge of Him, to know whom alone is life. True, these men of worldly learning prayed. But their hollow prayers bore no hope, for they knew not how to gain answers to them.

And yet the girl remained in her new environment, awaiting the call to "come up higher." And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her Father's business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient, flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education was religious in the strictest, deepest sense, for she was learning to know God.

Though the girl pursued her way quietly, unwilling that the notoriety which had been fastened upon her should mark her as an object of curiosity, yet her story soon spread among University circles, and the first semester was a scant two weeks old before her name had been debated in the numerous Sororities and Women's Clubs, and quietly dropped. Negro blood coursed in her veins; and the stigma of parental disgrace lay dark upon her. She lived with a woman of blackened reputation—a reputation which waxed no brighter under the casual, malicious comments of J. Wilton Ames, whose great financial strength had made him a Trustee of this institution of learning. If Carmen divined the comment that was passed concerning herself, she gave no indication. But Hitt and Father Waite knew that the girl had not found favor in the social and fraternal organizations of her mates; and they knew why.

"A curse upon such little minds!" mused Hitt, when he could no longer restrain himself. Then he called a student to his desk one day, at the conclusion of his lecture.

"Miss West," he said, "you are leader in the most prominent Sorority in the University. I want you to give Miss Carmen Ariza a bid."

The girl shook her head. "She is not desirable."

"But the charges against her are unfounded! They are flagrantly false!" stormed Hitt.

"Have you proof, Professor?" the girl asked, as she arched her brows.

"None definite. But—well, what if she were a negress? Hers is the most brilliant mind in the entire student-body!"

But, no. Race segregation is a divine tenet, scripturally justified. What though the girl's skin vied with the lilies and rosebuds? What though her hair was the brown of ripe fields? Had not God Almighty decreed that the negro should remain a drawer of water? A hewer of wood? Had the Lord designed him the equal of the noble white, He would have bleached his face, and bridged his flat nose. Miss West was a Southerner. And the reference to her dark-skinned sisters caused a little moue of disgust, as she flatly declined to consider Carmen an eligible candidate for membership in her Society.

"Lord above!" ejaculated Hitt, who had been brooding over the incident as he walked home with Father Waite. "That toadying, sycophantic, wealth-worshiping Miss West can see no farther than the epidermis! If we could have maintained Carmen's reputation as an Inca princess, this same girl would have fawned at her feet, and begged to kiss the edge of her robe! And she would have used every art of cajolery to ingratiate herself into Carmen's favor, to catch the social crumbs that our girl might chance to drop!"

"There, there, Hitt," soothed Father Waite. "Have you any idea that Carmen is at all injured by Miss West's supercilious conduct?"

"Not in the least!" asseverated Hitt vigorously. "But it makes me so—!"

"There, check that! You're forgetting the girl's influence, aren't you?"

Hitt gulped his wrath down his long throat. "Waite," he blurted, "that girl's an angel! She isn't real!"

"Oh, yes, she is!" replied Father Waite. "She's so real that we don't understand her—so real that she has been totally misunderstood by the petty minds that have sought to crush her here in New York, that's all."

"But certainly she is unique—"

"Ah, yes; unique in that she goes about putting her arms around people and telling them that she loves them. Yes, that certainly is unique! And she is unique in that her purity and goodness hang about her like an exquisite aura, and make people instinctively turn and look after her as she passes. Unique in that in her sweet presence one seems to hear a strain of heavenly music vibrating on the air. So unique that the dawn, the nesting birds, the wild flowers, the daily sunset, fairly intoxicate her with ecstasy and make her life a lyric."

Hitt essayed to reply; but the words hung in his throat.

"Yes," continued Father Waite, "she is so unique that when the empty-headed, vain young Duke of Altern, learning that she had been thrown out of society because of the base rumor regarding her parentage, sent her a written statement to the effect that there was no engagement between them, and demanded that she sign it, she did so, with a happy smile, with an invocation, with a prayer for blessing upon those who had tried to ruin her."

"Good God! Did she do that?"

"Aye, she did. And when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Ames and Lafelle filched La Libertad from her, she would have given them the clothes on her back with it, if they had demanded them. Yes, she's unique—so unique that again and again I hear her murmur, as she looks off absently into space: 'If it is right that he should have a son, then I want it to be so.'"

"Referring to—that priest—Jose de Rincon?"

"Yes, doubtless. And time and again I have heard her say: 'God is light. Sight depends upon light. Therefore Anita's babe sees.' Old Rosendo's grandson, you know."

Hitt nodded. "Waite," he said earnestly, "she is simply illustrating what would happen to any of us if we threw ourselves wholly upon God's protecting care, and took our thoughts only from Him. That's why she can lose her home, her family, her reputation, that mine—everything—and still stand. She does what we don't dare to do!"

"She is a living illustration," replied Father Waite, "of the mighty fact that there is nothing so practical as real Christianity. I want you to tell Professor Cane that. He calls her 'the girl with the Utopian views,' because of her ingenuous replies in his sociological class. But I want you to show him that she is very far from being impractical."

"I'll do it," said Hitt emphatically. "I'll prove to Cane that her religion is not a visionary scheme for regulating a world inhabited only by perfect beings, but is a working principle for the every-day sinner to use in the solution of his daily problems. Moreover, Waite, she is a vivid illustration of the fact that when the individual improves, the nation does likewise. Do you get me?"

"I not only get you, but I stand as a proof of your statement," returned Father Waite gently.

Carmen, her thoughts above, though her feet trod the earth, came and went, glad and happy. The change in her mode of living from the supreme luxury of the Hawley-Crowles mansion to the common comforts of the home where now she dwelt so simply with the Beaubien, seemed not to have caused even a ripple in the full current of her joy. Her life was a symphony of thanksgiving; an antiphony, in which all Nature voiced its responses to her in a diapason, full, rich, and harmonious. Often that autumn she might have been seen standing among the tinted leaves on the college campus, and drinking in their silent message. And then she might have been heard to exclaim, as she turned her rapt gaze beyond the venerable, vine-clad buildings: "Oh, I feel as if I just couldn't stand it, all this wealth of beauty, of love, of boundless good!" And yet she was alone, always alone. For her dark story had reared a hedge about her; the taboo rested upon her; and even in the crowded classrooms the schoolmates of her own sex looked askance and drew their skirts about them.

But if the students avoided her, the faculty did not. And those like Professor Cane, who had the opportunity and the ability to peer into the depths of the girl's soul, took an immediate and increasing interest in her. Often her own naive manners broke down the bars of convention, and brought her enduring friendships among the men of learning. This was especially the case with Doctor Morton, Dean of the School of Surgery. Yielding to a harmless impulse of curiosity, the girl one afternoon had set out on a trip of exploration, and had chosen the Anatomy building to begin with. Many odd sights greeted her eager gaze as she peered into classrooms and exhibit cases; but she met with no one until she chanced to open the door of Doctor Morton's private laboratory, and found that eminent man bending over a human brain, which he was dissecting.

Carmen stopped, and stood hesitant. The doctor looked up, surprise written large upon his features as he noted his fair caller. "Well!" he said, laying down his work.

"Well!" returned Carmen. "That sounds like the Indian 'How?' doesn't it?" Then both laughed.

"You—are—Doctor Morton?" queried the girl, twisting around and looking at the name on the door to make certain.

"Yes," replied the genial doctor, with growing interest. He was a gray-haired, elderly man, slightly inclined to embonpoint, and with keen, twinkling eyes. "Will you come in?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the girl; "I'd love to. I am Carmen Ariza."

"Ah, yes. The young South American—lady. I have heard of you."

"Most everybody seems to have heard of me," sighed the girl. "Well, it doesn't make any difference about my coming in here, does it?" She looked up at him so wistfully that he felt a great tug at his heartstrings.

"Not a bit!" he replied cordially. "You're as welcome as the April sun."

She seized his hand and pressed it. "Now tell me," she said eagerly, looking about. "What are you doing? What's that thing?"

"That," said he, taking up the pulpy gray object, "is the brain of my erstwhile friend and collaborator, Doctor Bolton. He willed it to the University."

"Alas, poor Yorick!" murmured Carmen, a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. "And why are you cutting it up?"

"In the interests of science," returned the man, studying her. "That we may increase our knowledge of this marvelous mechanism of thought, and the laws by which it operates in mental processes."

"Then you still blindly seek the living among the dead, don't you?" she murmured. "You think that this poor thing held life, and you search now among its ashes for the living principle. But, God is life; and 'Canst thou by searching find out God?'"

The man regarded her intently without replying. She bent for a while over the half-dissected brain in deep thought. Then she looked up.

"Doctor," she said, "life is not structural. God is life; and to know Him is to reflect life. Reflecting Him, we are immortal. Doctor, don't you think it is about time to do away with this business of dying?"

The man of science started visibly, and his eyes opened wider. The abrupt question quite swept him off his feet.

"You didn't really expect to find anything in this brain, did you?" she went on. "The brain is composed of—what?"

"Why, mostly water, with a few commonplace salts," he answered, wondering what the next question would be.

"And can a compound of water and a few commonplace salts think?" she asked, looking intently at him.

"N—no," he answered tentatively.

"The brain is not the cause of thought, then, but an effect, is it not?" she pursued.

"Why, really, my dear Miss Carmen, we don't know. We call it the organ of thought, because in some way thought seems to be associated with it, rather than with—well, with the liver, or muscles, for example. And we learn that certain classes of mental disturbances are intimately associated with lesions or clots in the brain. That's about all."

The girl reflected for a few moments. Then:

"Doctor, you wouldn't cut up a machine to discover the motive power, would you? But that is just what you are doing there with that brain. You are hoping by dissecting it to find the power that made it go, aren't you? And the power that made it go was mind—life."

"But the life is not in the brain now," hazarded the doctor.

"And never was," returned Carmen promptly. "You see," she went on, "if the brain was ever alive, it could never cease to be so. If it ever lived, it could never die. That brain never manifested real life. It manifested only a false sense of life. And that false sense died. Who or what says that the man who owned that brain is dead? Why, the human mind—human belief. It is the human mind, expressing its belief in death, and in a real opposite to life, or God. Don't you see?"

"H'm!" The doctor regarded the girl queerly. She returned his look with a confident smile.

"You believe in evolution, don't you?" she at length continued.

"Oh, surely," he replied unhesitatingly. "There is overwhelming evidence of it."

"Well, then, in the process of evolution, which was evolved first, the brain, or the mind which operates it and through it?" she asked.

"Why," he replied meditatively, "it is quite likely that they evolved simultaneously, the brain being the mind's organ of expression."

"But don't you see, Doctor, that you are now making the mind really come first? For that which expresses a thing is always secondary to the thing expressed."

"Well, perhaps so," he said. "At any rate, it is quite immaterial to a practical knowledge of how to meet the brain's ills. I am a practical man, you know."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said simply. "Practical men are so stupid and ignorant."

"Well, I declare!" he exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the smiling face.

"And you are so nice and friendly, I wouldn't want to think you stupid and ignorant," she went on blandly.

"H'm! Well, that kind o' takes the edge off your former classification of me," he said, greatly amused, yet wondering just what appraisal to place upon this frank girl.

"And evolution," she continued, "is an unfolding, isn't it? You see, the great fact of creation is the creator, infinite mind. Well, that mind expresses itself in its ideas. And these it is unfolding all the time. Now a fact always gives rise to a suppositional opposite. The opposite of a fact is an error. And that is why error has been called 'negative truth.' Of course, there isn't any such thing as negative truth! And so all error is simply falsity, supposition, without real existence. Do you see?"

He did not reply. But she went on unperturbed. "Now, the human, or carnal, mind is the negative truth of the real mind, God. It is infinite mind's suppositional opposite. And it imitates the infinite mind, but in a very stupid, blundering way. And so the whole physical universe manifests evolution, too—an unfolding, or revealing, of material types, or mental concepts. And all these manifest the human mind's sense of life, and its equally strong sense of death. The universe, animals, men, are all human types, evolved, or unfolded, or revealed, in the human mind. And all are the human mind's interpretations of infinite mind's real and eternal and perfect ideas. You see that, don't you?

"You know," she laughed, "speaking of 'negative truth', the first chapter of Genesis sets forth positive truth, and the second chapter sets forth its opposite, negative truth. It is very odd, isn't it? But there it is for everybody to read. And the human mind, of course, true to its beliefs, clings to the second chapter as the reality. Isn't it strange?"

Meantime, Carmen's attention had been attracted to a large microscope that stood on the table near her. Going to it, she peeped curiously down into the tube. "Well, what have you here?" she inquired.

"Germs," he said mechanically.

"Germs! What funny, twisted things! Well," she suddenly asked, "have you got the fear germ here?"

He broke into a laugh. But when the girl looked up, her face was quite serious.

"You do not know it, Doctor, for you are a practical man, but you haven't anything but fear germs under this glass," she said in a low voice.

"Why, those are germs of typhoid and tuberculosis!" he exclaimed.

"And manifestations, externalizations, of the fear germ itself, which is mental," she added. "These things don't cause disease," she went on, pointing to the slide. "But the thoughts which they manifest do. Do you scientists know why people die, Doctor?"

"No," he admitted seriously. "We really do not know why people die."

"Then I'll tell you," she said. "It's because they don't know enough to live. This poor Doctor Bolton died because he didn't know that God was life. He committed sickness, and then paid the penalty, death. He sinned by believing that there were other powers than God, by believing that life and thought were in matter. And so he paid the wages of sin, death. He simply missed the mark, that's all."

She turned and perched herself upon the table. "You haven't asked me to sit down," she commented brightly. "But, if you don't mind, I will."

"I—I beg your pardon!" the doctor exclaimed, coloring, and hastily setting out a chair. "I really was so interested in what you were saying that I forgot my manners."

"No," she said, shaking her head as she declined the proffered chair, "I'll sit here, so's I can look straight into your eyes. You go ahead and cut up poor Yorick, and I'll talk."

The doctor laughed again. "You are much more interesting," he returned, "than poor Bolton, dead or alive. In fact, he really was quite a bore. But you are like a sparkling mountain rill, even if you do give me a severe classification."

"Well," she replied, "then you are honestly more interested in life than in death, are you?"

"Why, most assuredly!" he said.

"So am I, much! Death is such a mistake; and I haven't a bit of use for it," she continued. "It's like making mistakes in music, or mathematics. Now when we make mistakes in those, we never stop to discuss them. We correct them. But, dear me! The world has nearly talked its poor old head off about the mistakes of sickness and death. It never seems to occur to the world that Jesus always associated sickness with sin. You know, the Rabbis of his day seem to have hit upon a great truth, although they didn't make it really practical. They maintained that a sick man could not be healed of his diseases until all his sins had been forgiven. And so they attempted to forgive sins and make men clean by their elaborate ceremonies. But they missed the mark, too. And nobody got to the root of the difficulty until Jesus came. He forgave sin by destroying it completely. And that cured the disease that was the manifestation of sin. Now I ask, why do you, nearly two thousand years after his time, still do as the old Rabbis did, and continue to treat the body—the effect—instead of the mental cause? But," looking down in meditation, "I suppose if you did that the people would cry, 'He hath a devil!' They thought I was a witch in Simiti."

"H'm!" returned the doctor. "Then you do not believe that disease is caused by microbes, I take it?"

"Disease caused by microbes? Yes, so it is. And the microbe? It is a manifestation of the human mind again. And, as with typhoid fever, diphtheria, and other diseases, the human mind applies its own cherished, ignorant beliefs in certain methods, and then renders innocuous its own manifestations, microbes. The human mind makes its own diseases, and then in some cases removes the disease, but still by human, material methods. Its reliefs are only temporary. At last it yields itself to its false beliefs, and then goes out in what it calls death. It is all a mental process—all human thought and its various manifestations. Now why not get beyond microbes and reach the cause, even of them, the human mind itself? Jesus did. Paul did. Others have done so. Why do not you men of science do likewise?"

Doctor Morton himself took the chair which he had set out for the girl. "What you say," he replied slowly, "is not new to me. But I can only answer that the world is not ready yet for the great change which you suggest."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "What cant! What mesmerism you are laboring under! Was the world ready for Jesus?"

"No. He came too soon. Events show that."

"Well, then, would he be accepted to-day, if he had not come before?"

"I can not say. But—I think he would not."

"And I quite agree with you," she said firmly. "Now the world has doctored for more than four thousand years, despite the fact that health is not sold in bottle or pill form. Doctor, what does the history of all these centuries of drugging show you?"

He hesitated. Carmen waited a moment; then continued:

"Don't they demonstrate the absolute inability of medicines to cure disease?" she asked. "Any more than putting men in prison cures crime?" she added as an afterthought.

"They at least prove that medication has not permanently removed disease," he ventured, not wishing to go too far.

"Doctor," she said earnestly, "that man Jesus, who, according to you, came too soon, said: 'Without me ye can do nothing.' Well, didn't he come very, very close to the truth when he made that statement? He did not say that without drugs or material remedies we could do nothing, but that without the Christ-principle mankind would continue, as before, to miss the mark. He showed that disease and discord result from sin. Sin is lack of righteousness, lack of right-thinking about things. It is wrong belief, false thought. Sin is mental. Its effect, disease, is mental—a state of discordant consciousness. Can you with drugs change a state of mind?"

"Certainly," he replied quickly. "Whiskey and opium cause changes in one's state of mind."

"No," she answered. "But the human belief of power inherent in whiskey and opium, or of the human body's reaction to them, causes a change in the human thought-activity that is called consciousness. The state of human consciousness changes with the belief, but not the real state of mind. Can you not see that? And Doctor Bolton—"

"Bolton was not sick. He died of natural causes, old age, and general breakdown," was the doctor's refuge.

Carmen laughed and sprang down from the table. "What an obstinately obdurate lot you scientific men are!" she exclaimed. "Don't you know that you doctors are only a development of the old 'medicine-man'? Now in the first place, Mr. Bolton isn't dead; and, in the second, there are no natural causes of death. Old age? Why, that's gone out of fashion, long since."

"You deny senile changes—?"

"I deny every human error!" she interrupted.

"Then," with a note of banter in his voice, "I take it that you do not expect to die."

"I do not!" she replied emphatically. "I expect good, nothing but good, ever! Don't you know that physiologists themselves admit that the human body is composed of eighty-five per cent water and fifteen per cent ordinary salts? Can such a combination have intelligence and sensation? Do you still believe that life is dependent upon lungs, stomach, or liver? Why, the so-called 'unit cell' breathes, digests, and manifests life-functions, and yet it has no lungs, no mouth, no stomach, no organs. It is the human mind, assuming knowledge and power which it does not possess, that says the sense of life shall depend upon such organs in the one case and not in the other. And the human mind could be utterly refuted if men would only learn to use the Christ-principle. Jesus and Paul used it, and proved material laws to be only false beliefs."

"Well," he replied meditatively, "if you are correct, then the preachers are way off the track. And I have long since come to the conclusion that—Well," changing abruptly back to the previous topic, "so you refute the microbe theory, eh?"

"I said I did and did not," she laughed. "Listen: fear, worry, hatred, malice, murder, all of which are mental things in themselves, manifest to the human mind as microbes. These are the hurtful microbes, and they produce toxins, which poison the system. What is the cure? Antitoxins? No, indeed! Jesus gave the real and permanent cure. It is the Christ-principle. Now you can learn that principle, and how to apply it. But if you don't care to, why, then you must go on with your material microbes and poisons, and with your diseases and death, until you are ready to leave them and turn to that which is real. For all human-mind activity and manifestation, whether in microbes, death, or life, is mental, and is but the counterfeit of the real activity of divine mind, God.

"Do you know," she pursued earnestly, "I heard a lecture the other day in which it was said that life is a sort of fermentation in the body. Well, as regards human life, I guess that is so. For the human body is only a manifestation of the human mind; and the human mind surely is in a continuous state of ferment!"

She paused and laughed. "The lecturer," she continued, "said that the range of life was from ultra-microbe to man, and that Shakespeare began as a single cell. Think of it! The mundane concept of Shakespeare's body may have unfolded from a cell-concept; but Shakespeare was a manifestation of mind! And that mind was an interpretation, though very imperfect, of the mind that is God. Why can't you materialists raise your eyes above the dust? Why, you would choke the very avenues of the spirit with mud!"

"H'm! Well, your education seems to be—"

"Yes," she interrupted, "my education is beyond the vagaries that are so generally taught in the name of knowledge. Intellectual education is a farce. It does nothing for mankind, except to give them a false culture. Were the so-called great men of the past really educated? Here is an extract which I copied this afternoon from Hawthorne." She opened her note book and read:

"'Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.'

"Now," she asked, "was that man really educated? In current theology, yes. But that theology could not solve his least earthly problem, nor meet his slightest need! Oh, what inexpressibly sad lives so many of your greatest men have lived! Your Hawthorne, your Longfellow, they yearned for the rest which they were taught was to follow death. They were the victims of false theology. They were mesmerized. If they believed in the Christ—and they thought they did—why, then, did they not rise up and do as he bade them do, put death out? He taught no such resignation to human beliefs as they practiced! He showed men how to overcome the world. Why do we not try to overcome it? Has the time not come? Is the world not sufficiently weary of dying?"

He looked at her intently for some moments. She seemed, as she stood there before him, like a thing of gossamer and sunshine that had drifted into his laboratory, despite the closed door.

"Say," he suddenly exclaimed, as a new thought struck him, "I'd like to have you talk with my friend, Reverend Patterson Moore! Pat and I have barked at each other for many years now, and I'm getting tired. I'd like to shift him to a younger and more vigorous opponent. I believe you've been providentially sent to relieve me."

"Well," she acquiesced. "You can tell Professor Hitt, and—"

"Hitt, eh? You know him?"

"Yes, indeed! He comes often to our house. He is very much interested in these things that you and I have been talking about to-day. We have regular meetings, with Father Waite, and Mr. Haynerd, and—"

"Well, no wonder you can argue! You've had practice, it seems. But—suppose I have Hitt bring me to one of your meetings, eh?"

"Do!" cried the girl. "And bring your Reverend Pat."

The genial doctor laughed long and incontinently. "I imagine Reverend Pat wouldn't thank you for referring to him that way," he said. "He is a very high Anglican, and his dignity is marvelous—to say nothing of his self-esteem. Well, we'll see, we'll see. But, don't go yet! We're just getting acquainted."

"I must," replied the girl. "I didn't really mean to come in here, you know. But I guess I was led, don't you?"

And when the door had closed upon her, the doctor sat silently beside the pulseless brain of his deceased comrade and pondered long.

* * * * *

When Carmen entered the house, late that afternoon, she found the Beaubien in conversation with Professor Williams, of the University School of Music. That gentleman had learned through Hitt of the girl's unusual voice, and had dropped in on his way home to ask that he might hear and test it. With only a smile for reply, Carmen tossed her books and hat upon the sofa and went directly to the piano, where she launched into the weird Indian lament which had produced such an astounding effect upon her chance visitors at the Elwin school that day long gone, and which had been running in her thought and seeking expression ever since her conversation with Doctor Morton a short while before.

For a full half hour she sang, lost in the harmony that poured from her soul. Father Waite entered, and quietly took a seat. She did not see him. Song after song, most of them the characteristic soft melodies of her people, and many her own simple improvisations, issued from the absorbed girl's lips. The Beaubien rose and stole softly from the room. Father Waite sat with his head resting on his hand, striving to interpret the message which welled from the depths of his own being, where hidden, unused chords were vibrating in unison with those of this young girl.

Then, abruptly, the singing stopped, and Carmen turned and faced her auditors. "There," she said, with a happy sigh, "that just had to come out!"

Professor Williams rose and took her hand. "Who, may I ask, was your teacher?" he said, in a voice husky with emotion.

Carmen smiled up at him. "No human teacher," she said gently.

A look of astonishment came into the man's face. He turned to Father Waite inquiringly. The latter nodded his confirmation of the girl's words.

"Well!" exclaimed the professor. "I wonder if you realize what you have got, Miss Carmen?"

"Yes," she replied simply. "It's a beautiful gift, isn't it?"

"But—I had thought of asking you to let me train you—but—I—I dare not undertake to handle such a voice as yours. May I—may I send Maitre Rossanni to you, the great Italian? Will you sing for him?"

"Oh, yes," returned the girl; "I'll sing for anybody. The gift isn't mine, you know. It is for all. I'm only the channel."

When the professor had taken his reluctant departure, the Beaubien returned and handed Carmen a letter. With a cry of joy the girl seized it and tore it open. It was from Colombia, the second one that her beloved Rosendo had succeeded in getting down the river to the distant coast. It had been written three months prior, and it bore many stains and evidences of the vicissitudes through which it had emerged. Yes, Rosendo and his family were well, though still at Maria Rosa, far up the Boque, with Don Nicolas. The war raged below them, but they were safe.

"And not a word from Padre Jose, or about him," murmured the girl, sinking into a chair and clasping the soiled letter to her breast.

Father Waite thought of the little newsboy of Cartagena, and his possible share in the cause of Jose's silence. But he made no comment.



CHAPTER 4

Carmen's first serious test of her knowledge of English composition was made early in the semester, in an essay on town life in Colombia; and so meritorious did her instructor consider it that he advised her to send it to a prominent literary magazine. The result was that the essay was accepted, and a request made for further contributions.

The girl bubbled with new-found happiness. Then she wrote another, and still another article on the life and customs of her people. Both were given publication; and with the money which she received for them she bought a silk dress for Jude, much to that adoring woman's surprise and vehement protest. Carmen might have saved the money toward a piano—but, no; that would have been thinking of herself, and was inadmissible. Nor did the Beaubien offer any objection. "Indeed," commented that fond shepherd of this lone lamb, "she would have poured the money out into somebody's open hand anyway, and it might as well be Jude's."

Then she choked back the tears as she added: "The girl comes home every night with an empty purse, no matter how full it may have been in the morning. What does she do with the money? Follow her some day and see."

Carmen's slight success in the field of letters still further aroused Haynerd's interest. The peacefully somnolent Social Era, he thought, might awaken to new things under the stimulus of such fresh writing as hers. Perhaps life did hold something of real value after all. Would she furnish him with a column or two on the peculiar social aspect of the metropolis?

She would, and did. And the result was that the staid conservative sheet was given a smart shaking; and several prominent society people sat up and blinked. The article was in no way malicious. It was not even condemnatory. It but threw a clear light from a somewhat unusual angle upon certain phases of New York's social life, and uncovered a few of the more subtly hidden springs of its peculiar activity.

Among those who read her essay in the Social Era was J. Wilton Ames. He first lay back in his chair and laughed uproariously. And then, when his agents discovered for him the identity of the author, he glowered. The Beaubien was still standing between him and this budding genius. And though he might, and would, ultimately ruin the Beaubien financially, yet this girl, despite her social ostracism, bade fair to earn with her facile pen enough to maintain them both in luxury. So he bent anew to his vengeful schemes, for he would make them come to him. As Trustee, he would learn what courses the girl was pursuing in the University—for he had long known that she was in attendance there. Then he would learn who her associates were; what suggestions and advice her instructors gave her; and her plans for the future. And he would trace her sources of income and apply pressure at the most vital point. He had never in his life been successfully balked. Much less by a woman.

Then Haynerd came to congratulate Carmen again, and to request that she attend with him the formal opening of the new Ames mansion, the great Fifth Avenue palace, for he wanted her vivid, first-hand impressions for his account of the brilliant affair in the Social Era. As reporters, he explained, they would of necessity remain in seclusion, and the girl might disguise to such an extent as to prevent recognition, if she chose. It was business for him, and an opportunity for rich experience for her. And the fearless girl went, because it would help Haynerd, though the Beaubien inwardly trembled.

Invitations to the number of three hundred had been issued to the elite of New York, announcing the formal opening of the newly finished, magnificent Ames dwelling. These invitations were wrought in enamel on cards of pure gold. Each had cost thirty dollars. The mansion itself, twelve millions. A month prior to the opening, the newspapers had printed carefully-worded announcements of the return of Mrs. J. Wilton Ames and her daughter, after a protracted stay at various foreign baths and rest-cures in the hope of restoring the former's impaired health. But Mrs. Ames now felt that she could no longer deprive society of her needed activities, and so had returned to conduct it through what promised to be a season of unusual brilliancy. The papers did not, however, state that J. Wilton had himself recalled her, after quietly destroying his bill of divorce, because he recognized the necessity of maintaining the social side of his complicated existence on a par with his vast business affairs.

As Carmen and Haynerd approached the huge, white marble structure, cupolaed, gabled, buttressed, and pinnacled, an overwhelming sense of what it stood for suddenly came upon the girl, and she saw revealed in a flash that side of its owner's life which for so many months she had been pondering. The great shadows that seemed to issue from the massive exterior of the building swept out and engulfed her; and she turned and clasped Haynerd's arm with the feeling that she would suffocate were she to remain longer in them.

"Perk up, little one," said Haynerd, taking her hand. "We'll go round to the rear entrance, and I will present my business card there. Ames's secretary telephoned me instructions, and I said I was going to bring a lady reporter with me."

Carmen caught her breath as she passed through the tall, exquisitely wrought iron gateway and along the marble walk which led to the rear. Up the winding steps to the front entrance, where swung the marvelous bronze doors which had stirred the imaginations of two continents, streamed the favored of the fashionable world. Among them Carmen saw many whom she recognized. The buffoon, Larry Beers, was there, swinging jauntily along with the bejeweled wife of Samson, the multimillionaire packer. Kane and his wife, and Weston followed. Outside the gates there was incessant chugging of automobiles, mingled with the shouted orders of the three policemen detailed to direct the traffic. A pinched, ragged urchin and his tattered little sister crept up and peered wildly through the iron pickets of the fence; but a sharp rap from a policeman's club sent them scattering. Carmen stood for a moment in the shadows and watched the swarm mount the marble steps and enter through those wonderful doors. There were congressmen and senators, magnates and jurists, distillers and preachers. Each one owed his tithe of allegiance to Ames. Some were chained to him hard and fast, nor would break their bonds this side of the grave. Some he owned outright. There were those who grew white under his most casual glance. There were others who knew that his calloused hand was closing about them, and that when it opened again they would fall to the ground, dry as dust. Others, like moths, not yet singed, were hovering ever closer to the bright, cruel flame. Reverend Darius Borwell, bowing and smiling, alighted from his parochial car and tripped blithely up the glistening marble steps. Each and all, wrapping the skeleton of grief, greed, shame, or fear beneath swart broadcloth and shimmering silk, floated up those ghostly steps as if drawn by a tremendous magnet incarnate in the person of J. Wilton Ames.

Carmen shuddered and turned away. Did the pale wraith of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sigh in the wake of that gilded assembly? Did the moans of poor, grief-stricken Mrs. Gannette, sitting in her poverty and sorrow, die into silence against those bronze doors? Was he, the being who dwelt in that marble palace, the hydra-headed embodiment of the carnal, Scriptural, age-old power that opposes God? And could he stand forever?

Two detectives met them at the rear door. How many others there were scattered through the house itself, Haynerd could only guess. But he passed inspection and was admitted with the girl. A butler took immediate charge of them, and led them quickly through a short passage and to an elevator, by which they mounted to another floor, where, opening a paneled oak door, the dignified functionary preceded them into a small reception hall, with lavatories at either end. Here he bade them remove their wraps and await his return.

"Well," commented Haynerd, with a light, nervous laugh, "we've crossed the Rubicon! Now don't miss a thing!"

A moment later the butler returned with a sharp-eyed young woman, Mrs. Ames's social secretary.

"You will be very careful in your report," the latter began at once in a business-like manner. "And you will submit the same to me for approval before it is published in your magazine. Mr. Ames deems that imperative, since your recent publication of an essay on modern society in this city. I have a list here of the guests, their business and social standing, and other data. You will run that in full. You will say that this is the most brilliant assemblage ever gathered under one roof in New York. The wealth represented here to-night will total not less than three billion dollars. The jewels alone displayed will foot up not less than twenty millions. Now, let me see," again consulting her notes.

Haynerd stole a covert glance at Carmen and winked.

"The chef," the secretary resumed, "was brought over from Paris by Mrs. Ames on her recent return. His name, Pierre Lotard, descendant of the famous chef of the Emperor Napoleon First. He considers that his menu to-night surpasses anything he ever before achieved."

"May I ask," interrupted Haynerd, "the probable cost of the supper?"

"Yes, perhaps you had better mention that item. It will be in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars a plate. House and table decorations, about eight thousand dollars. Here is a copy of the menu. Run it in full. The menu cards were hand-illuminated by Parisian artists, and each bears a sketch illustrative or suggestive of the guest to whom it is given."

"Cost?" queried Haynerd off-handedly.

"Three thousand, if I correctly recall it," was the nonchalant reply. "As to the viands, you will mention that they have been gathered from every part of the world. Now come with me, and I will give you a hasty sketch of the house, while the guests are assembling in the grand salon. Then you will remain in the balcony, where you will make what notes you wish on the dress displayed. Refreshments will be served to you later in this waiting room. I need not remind you that you are not expected to mingle with the guests, nor to address any one. Keep to the balcony, and quite out of view."

Opening a door opposite the one through which she had entered, the young woman led her charges directly out upon the great marble balcony overlooking the grand salon below. A rush of brilliant light engulfed them, and a potpourri of chatter and laughter, mingled with soft music from a distant organ, and the less distinct notes of the orchestra in the still more distant ballroom, rose about them in confused babel, as they tiptoed to the exquisitely carved marble railing and peered down upon the gorgeous pageant. The ceiling rose far above them, delicately tinted like a soft Italian sky. The lofty walls dropped, like gold-gray veils, to the richly carved paneled wainscoting beneath, which had once lined the halls of a mediaeval castle on the Rhine. The great windows were hidden behind rare Venetian lace curtains, over which fell hangings of brocade, repeating the soft tints of the wall and the brocade-covered chairs and divans ranged close about the sides of the splendid room. On the floor lay a massive, priceless Persian carpet, dating from the fifteenth century.

Haynerd drew a long breath, and whistled softly. From the end of the salon he could mark the short flight of steps which led to the mezzanine, with its walls heavily tapestried, and broken by rich oak doors opening into lavatories and lounging rooms, itself widening at the far end into the grand billiard and smoking parlors, done off in Circassian walnut, with tables and furniture to harmonize. From the mezzanine he saw the grand stairway falling away in great, sweeping curves, all in blended marble from the world's greatest quarries, and delicately chased and carved into classic designs. Two tapestries, centuries old, hung from the walls on either side. Far above, the oak ceiling, for which the Schwarzwald had been ranged, was overlaid with pure gold leaf. The whole was suffused with the glow of myriad hidden and inverted lights, reflected in a thousand angles from burnished gold and marble and rarest gems.

Haynerd turned to the waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to the inept remark, "Swell—by George!"

The secretary, without replying, motioned them to follow. Passing noiselessly around the balcony to the opposite side, she indicated a door below, leading off to the right from the grand salon.

"That room beyond," she said, "is the petit salon. The decorative effects are by French artists. Beyond that is the morning room. It is in panels from French chateaux, covered with Gobelin tapestry. Now from here you can see a bit of the music room. The grand organ cost, installed, about two hundred thousand dollars. It is electrically controlled, with its pipes running all around the room, so as to give the effect of music coming from every corner."

Haynerd again softly whistled.

"There are three art galleries beyond, two for paintings, and one for sculpture. Mr. Ames has without doubt the finest art collection in America. It includes several Titians, Veroneses, da Vincis, Turners, three Rubens, and two Raphaels. By the way, it may interest you to know that his negotiations for the Murillo Madonna were completed to-day, and the picture will be sent to him immediately."

"Might I ask what he paid for it?" Haynerd inquired casually.

"You may say that he paid something over three hundred thousand dollars for it," she replied, in a quite matter of fact tone. "Now," she continued, "you will go back to your first position, near the door of the waiting room, and remain there until I return. I may have an opportunity later to show you the library. It is very unique. Great carved stone fireplace, taken from a Scotch castle. Hundreds of rare volumes and first editions. Now, if any one approaches, you can step behind the screen and remain out of view. You have chairs and a table there for your writing. Do not in any event leave this balcony."

With this final injunction she turned and disappeared into the little waiting room from which they had emerged.

For some moments Carmen and Haynerd stood looking alternately at each other and about them at their magnificent environment. Both had seen much of the gilded life, and the girl had dwelt some months in its alien atmosphere. But neither had ever witnessed such a stupendous display of material wealth as was here unfolded before their astonished gaze. At the head of the grand stairway stood the Ames trio, to receive their resplendent guests. The women were magnificently gowned. But Ames's massive form in its simple black and chaste linen was the cynosure of all eyes. Even Haynerd could not suppress a note of admiration as he gazed at the splendid figure.

"And yet," he murmured, "a victim, like the rest, of the great delusion."

Carmen laid down the opera glasses through which she had been studying the man. "He is an expression," she said, "of the American ideal—the ideal of practical material life. It is toward his plane of life that this country's youth are struggling, at, oh, what a cost! Think, think, what his immense, misused revenue could do, if unselfishly used! Why, the cost of this single night's show would put two hundred men like Father Waite through a four-year course in the University, and train them to do life's work! And what, what will Mr. Ames get out of it?"