The Path of a Star by Sara Jeannette Duncan
page 38 of 305 (12%)
page 38 of 305 (12%)
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"I am so wondrously saved from sin, Jesus so sweetly abides within; There at the Cross where He took me in, Glory to His name!" She smiled as she sang. It was a happy confident smile, and it was plain that she longed to believe it the glad reflection of the last ten minutes' spiritual experience of many who heard her. Lindsay's perception of this was immediate and keen, and when her eyes rested for an instant of glad inquiry upon his in the chartered intimacy of her calling, he felt a pang of compunction. It was a formless reproach, too vague for anything like a charge, but it came nearest to defining itself in the idea that he had gone too far--he who had not left his seat. When the hymn was finished, and Ensign Sand said, "The meeting is now open for testimonies," he knew that all her hope was upon him, though she looked at the screen above his head; and he sat abashed, with a prodigal sense surging through him of what he would rejoice to do for her in compensation. In the little chilly silence that followed he surprised his own eyes moist with disappointment--it had all been so anxious and so vain--and he felt relief and gratitude when the man who beat the drum stood up and announced that he had been saved for eleven years, with details about how badly he stood in need of it when it happened. "Hallelujah!" said Ensign Sand cheerfully, with a meretricious air of hearing it for the first time. "Any more?" and a Norwegian sailor lurched shamefacedly upon his feet. He had a couple of inches of straggling yellow beard all round his face, and fingered an old felt hat. |
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