You'd better not waste your time over me." She had not, she might triumphantly reflect, during these eight years, given Him many chances, and yet He was still there.

She hated the thought of His patience, and somewhere deep within herself she dreaded the faint, dim beat of some response that, like a warning bell across a misty sea, cautioned her.

"You may think you're safe from Him, but He'll catch you yet." "He shan't," she replied.

"I'm stronger than He is." II This must sound, in so prosaic a summary of it, fantastic, but nothing could be said to be fantastic about Sarah.

She was, for one thing, quite the least troublesome of children.