hunger for the shining of his face in me."

"That must be the meaning of the beatitude which puzzled my childhood,"
she answered trying to speak lightly, to hide feelings that were deeply
moved: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled."

"Thank you," he said, smiling; "there is actually a promise! I had not
thought of it. And yet"--the thoughtful frown gathering almost
immediately--"do you suppose that a person who really hungered for a
certain thing could be satisfied with anything else? I often have an
hour of what at the moment seems to me like hunger for Him, but the hour
passes, and I get filled--with business, or with plans, or possibly with
annoyances, and feel nothing but a general irritation for everybody. Do
you think there can be anything genuine about such desires, so easily
turned aside?"

"Oh, I do not know," said Gracie, hastily. "Why do you ask me such
things? Did not I tell you I was not good? Ask those people who are
unlike all others. Why don't you ask this Joy? She could tell you, I
presume. I can tell you nothing, save that this is a very strange world,
not half so nice as I once thought it, and I don't like to think about
things."

How _different_ he was from other young men with whom she had spent
fifteen minutes many a time in gay banter! This was, after all, the
thought uppermost in her mind at the moment. Nice Christian men, of whom
her father spoke well, and who, people said, were young men to be proud
of. It seemed to her that she knew them by the dozens, yet with which
one of them had she ever carried on such a conversation as this? With