came in, dear. Christmas is a hard time with all its memories. _I
think I have found out what we lonely women want. It is a future_.
Our thoughts are always turning to the past. There is not anything
to link us on to the next generation. You see other women with
their families--it is the future to which they look. However good
the past has been, they expect more to come, for their sons and
their daughters. Their life goes on in other lives.' Hildeguard
clasped her hands round her knees and stared into the fire."


"Their life goes on in other lives"--the thought finds a home in
Hildeguard's mind. When, soon after, the little Quakeress dies,
Hildeguard, looking at the quiet face, says to herself: "_Dear little
woman! So you have got your future._" But in her own case she does not
wait for death to bring it to her; she faces her problems, and, refusing
to be swamped by them, makes the currents carry her bark along to the
free, open sea. She flings herself whole-heartedly into causes whose
hopes rest in the future. She draws around her children, who need her
love and care, and makes them her hostages for the future. In all this
we see Elsie Inglis describing a stage in her own life.

But before the story brings us round again to Christmas, something else
has helped to change the outlook for Hildeguard; she has found herself
in relation to God. Her religion is no merely inherited thing--not hers
at second-hand, this "link with God." It is a real thing to her, found
for herself, made part of herself, and so her sure foundation. It has
come to her in a flash, a never-to-be-forgotten illumination of the
words: "_The Power of an Endless Life_." She faces life now glad and
free.