No one in Cherryvale ever got a word from Melissa about the true
inwardness of the spiritual renaissance she experienced the winter
that the Reverend MacGill came to the Methodist church; naturally
not her father nor mother nor Aunt Nettie, because grown-ups, though
nice and well-meaning, with their inability to "understand," and
their tendency to laugh make one feel shy and reticent about the
really deep and vital things. And not even Tess O'Neill, Missy's
chum that year, a lively, ingenious, and wonderful girl, was in this
case clever enough to obtain complete confidence.

Once before Missy had felt the flame divine--a deep, vague kind of
glow all subtly mixed up with "One Sweetly Solemn Thought" and such
slow, stirring, minor harmonies, and with sunlight stealing through
the stained-glass window above the pulpit in colourful beauty that
pierced to her very soul. But that was a long time ago, when she was
a little thing--only ten. Now she was nearly sixteen. Things were
different. One now was conscious of the reality of inward
inexperiences: these must influence life--one's own and, haply, the
lives of others. What Missy did not emphasize in her mind was the
mystery of how piety evolved from white fox furs and white fox furs
finally evolved from piety. But she did perceive that it would be
hopeless to try to explain her motives about Arthur as mixed up with
the acquisition of the white fox furs. . . No; not even Tess O'Neill
could have grasped the true inwardness of it all.

It all began, as nearly as one could fix on a concrete beginning,
with Genevieve Hicks's receiving a set of white fox furs for
Christmas. The furs were soft and silky and luxurious, and Genevieve
might well have been excused for wearing them rather triumphantly.
Missy wasn't at all envious by nature and she tried to be fair-