"The first evening she was here, she told me she had always been 'a great Bible student.' She spends much time over a very large Bible, which she marks in various coloured inks, and with extraordinary criss-cross lines, which she calls 'railways'. She explained the system to me one day, and showed me a new 'line' she had just made. You started at the top of a page at the word little. Then you followed down a blue line, which brought you to a second mention of the word little. From there you zigzagged off, still on blue, right across to the opposite page; and there found little, again. This was a junction! If you started down a further blue line you arrived at yet a fourth little, but if you adventured along a red line, you found less.

"I had hoped to learn a lot from Mrs. Mallory, when she said she was a great Bible student, because I am so new at Bible study, and have no one to help me. But I confess these railway excursions from little to little, and from little to less, appear to me somewhat futile! None of the littles had any connection with one another; that is, until Mrs. Mallory's blue railway connected them. She is now making a study of all the Marys of the Bible. She has a system by which she is going to prove that they were all one and the same person. I suggested that this would be an infinite pity; as they all have such beautiful individual characters, and such beautiful individual histories.

"'Truth before beauty, my dear Mrs. Rivers,' said Mrs.
Mallory.

"'Cannot truth and beauty go together?' I inquired.

"'No, indeed,' pronounced Mrs. Mallory, firmly. 'Truth is a narrow line; beauty is a snare.'

"According to which method of reasoning, my dear David, I ought to have serious misgivings as to whether your Christmas-eve sermon, which changed my whole outlook on life, was true—seeing that it most certainly was beautiful!

"Now listen to my little story.

"One morning, during this last autumn, Mrs. Mallory received a business letter at breakfast, necessitating an immediate journey to town, for a trying interview. After much weighing of pros and cons, she decided upon a train; and I sent her to the station in the motor.