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'Lovest thou Me?'

Ah, Lord, I have such feeble faith,

Such feeble hope to comfort me:

But love it is, is strong as death,

And I love Thee.

The second verse was sung by a boy unaccompanied.

'That's young Klitch, the son of the man with the curiosity shop,' Gaselee reflected. In the third verse seven bars were repeated, reminding him a little of the close of the adagio in Mozart's 'Jupiter' symphony. 'I'll tell Doggett that. I bet he never thought of it. There's something ridiculous,' he thought, 'in an ugly little boy whispering into space "Lovest thou Me?" even though——' Then something pulled him up as sharply as though his face had been struck.

Deep shame held him. They were kneeling and he buried his hands and prayed. It was his soul that had risen from some deep chasm where too often it was hid, and clearly, quietly, faced him. For he cared for beauty and all lovely things, goodness and high conduct and the nobility of man. He believed in God, but life was for ever offering him alternatives, pride and wit and self-advancement and the good opinion of his fellows. Soon, very soon, when he was walking through the lighted town to his lodgings, the world would surge back again—'Because Christina was a poet, because a boy sang unaccompanied, because Doggett is a musician, I was sentimentally moved as old stout Mrs. Braund has been moved. A boy sang, a poet wrote, a musician played, and I believed in God. . . .'