Barbara was one who, so far as human eyes could see, had never required what is commonly termed conversion. She had but to go on, recognize, and do. She turned to the light by a holy will as well as holy instinct. She needed much instruction, and might yet have fierce battles to fight. But to urge such a one as Barbara to undergo a radical change of direction would be to turn her away from the path toward truth she was already on. The whole energy of her being was in the direction of what was right. She needed but to be told a good thing—not told that a thing was good—and at once she received it—that is, obeyed it, the only way of receiving a truth. She did the thing immediately demanded upon every reception of light, every expansion of true knowledge. She was essentially of the truth. Therefore when she came into relation with such a soul as Wingfold, a soul so much more developed than herself, her life was fed from his and began to grow faster. For he taught her to know the eternal man who bore witness to his father, to know that his heart was the heart of a child in truth and love, and the heart of a God in courage and patience, and Barbara became his blessed child, the inheritor of his universe.

Happily her life had not been loaded to the ground with the degrading doctrines of a wrathful God whose so-called justice is perversely satisfied with the blood of the innocent for the punishment of the guilty. From the whole swarm of that brood of meager, incomplete teachings she was protected—by pure lack of what is generally regarded as a religious education. Such teaching is the mother of more tears in humble souls, and more presumption in the proud and selfish, than perhaps any other influence out of whose darkness God brings light. Neither ascetic nor mystic nor doctrinist of any sort, caring nothing for church or chapel or observance of any kind for its own sake, Barbara believed in God, and was coming to believe in Jesus Christ. And glad she was as she had never been before that there was such a person as Jesus Christ! She believed in the God of the whole earth, not a puritanical God.

Wingfold never sought to influence her in any way concerning her workman-friend—he only sought to strengthen her in the truth.

One day they were all three sitting together in the twilight.