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86 its full value. Her voice, naturally soft and rather wistful, trailed over the long measures and the threatening Biblical names, all familiar to her and full of meaning.

Her voice groped as if she were trying to realize something. The room was growing greyer as she read on through the turgid catalogue of the heathen gods, so packed with stories and pictures, so unaccountably glorious. At last the light failed, and Mrs. Wheeler closed the book.

“That’s fine,” Claude commented from the couch. “But Milton couldn’t have got along without the wicked, could he?”

Mrs. Wheeler looked up. “Is that a joke?” she asked slyly.

“Oh no, not at all! It just struck me that this part is so much more interesting than the books about perfect innocence in Eden.”

“And yet I suppose it shouldn’t be so,” Mrs. Wheeler said slowly, as if in doubt.

Her son laughed and sat up, smoothing his rumpled hair. “The fact remains that it is, dear Mother. And if you took all the great sinners out of the Bible, you’d take out all the interesting characters, wouldn’t you?”

“Except Christ,” she murmured.

“Yes, except Christ. But I suppose the Jews were honest when they thought him the most dangerous kind of criminal.”

“Are you trying to tangle me up?” his mother inquired, with both reproach and amusement in her voice.

Claude went to the window where she was sitting, and looked