harmony. It sank into a tender yearning cry throbbing with passionate
desire, and then it rose again in thrilling ecstasy: a song of hope, of
victory.

Joan, trembling, stole from her bed and drew aside the blind. There was
nothing to be seen but the stars and the dim shape of the hills. But
still that song, filling the air with its wild, triumphant melody.

Years afterwards, listening to the overture to _Tannhauser_, there came
back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic
discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims' onward
march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song
of Life. Through the dim aeons of man's savage infancy; through the
centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny
and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless
of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale's song: "I love you. I
love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our brood. I
love you. I love you. Life shall not die."

Joan crept back into bed. A new wonder had come to her. And from that
night Joan's belief in Mrs. Munday's God began to fade, circumstances
helping.

Firstly there was the great event of going to school. She was glad to
get away from home, a massive, stiffly furnished house in a wealthy
suburb of Liverpool. Her mother, since she could remember, had been an
invalid, rarely leaving her bedroom till the afternoon. Her father, the
owner of large engineering works, she only saw, as a rule, at
dinner-time, when she would come down to dessert. It had been different
when she was very young, before her mother had been taken ill. Then she