She had come in out of curiosity -- or so she would have said, had anyone commented on her presence at this strange meeting. They were queer folk, these Quakers, from all one heard; it might be amusing to see if they really did sit silent all the time if no one was moved to speak. She would never have confessed, had she even been aware of it, that her underlying motive was to prove if there could be real silence in the present-day world, a worship free from the chanting of choirs, the bright breeziness of populer singing, the blare of cornets, or the all pervadingness of wireless. 

Now she sat, feeling slightly embarrassed, on a rush-seated chair among the strangely preoccupied gathering. They had smiled at her as she slipped in, a slow, friendly smile of greeting, but there had been no word spoken, and the smile had slipped back whence it came to be replaced by a look of abstraction. Hands resting quietly in their laps, they sat, some with heads bowed, others looking through the wali into an unknown distance and the silence grew into something tangible. 

‘What ought one to do?" wondered Margaret, carefully adopting the pose of the woman nearest to her, and letting herself relax in her chair. They must be thinking of something, these people -- praying perhaps. What about? she wondered. This woman at her side looked very peaceful, apparently she knew no fears and worries that made the brain go round in desperate circles, trying to find some safe refuge.

It was a plain room, bare but not ugly. Her eyes slid from the cream distempered walls to the fresh rush matting on the floor, yes, it was not unpleasing, this little upper room, if different from a proper church. One vivid touch of colour broke its subdued tone, a great bunch of daffodils on a small centre table. They seemed to shout in the silence with their glorious burst of colour. Why were they there? thought Margaret. Did they mean anything, like the furniture of an altar, all symbolic and sacred? 

They made you think, somehow, and happy thoughts; they were so glad in themselves. One might almost believe again in a kind God, looking at the glory of daffodils, one might ~- if all that had not been put behind one long ego, with other childish things. She sighed, without realising it. How easy it was when you were a child, this simple belief. Snatches of old hymns came back -- "A Friend for little children, above the bright blue sky.." That was so easy to picture when you were a child, before you had read of atmosphere and stratosphere and the great endless paces beyond. "Jesus loves me, this I know..." Yes, one knew it before one's mind was tangled with theories of the personal unconscious, with half understood study of complexes and fixations. 

A woman was on her feet speaking, so diffidently and softly that Margeret, her mind still in the past, missed her opening words and only caught at a phrase “the presence in our midst." Quietly the women sat down again and the silence closed around her. What a little to say! thought Margaret, and then, "I wonder why she said it. Did the spirit move her, as the books say?" She looked curiously across at the woman, but her hands were once more resting in her lap, and her bowed head gave no indication of message received or given. 

The chance phrase remained, and Margaret's mind seized on it, turning it round and round, There was nothing new in that, of course The churches all preached that - someone in the midst, a friendly someone to whom the Salvation Army played its bands, an aloof someone dwelling in a Real Presence on the Altar. 

Suddenly a man lifted his head. There was a glow on his face as if he had seen a vision and his voice, as he gave his message, was deep with earnestness. Again just a few words -~ words on his heart, he said, which must be spoken, lest one there should need them. “Perfect love casteth out fear." 

"Just another text," thought Margaret. They all did that too, quoting the Bible as if -~ oh, well, it didn't do to go into all that again; what did it matter, anyway? But why that particular text? Mean of him to remind her of fear, just when she had almost been forgetting, just when the daffodils had been preaching hope at her. Fear? What did he know of fear, that man with the saint-like face? What did any man know of fear as women know it? Did they have to face what she had to face, counting the weeks, waiting for the end, which might be end in very truth? 

There she was, back at it again, that deadly fear which she carried with her all the time, and he, a man, tried to pretend that you could get rid of such a fear? Get rid of it when those words were cut deep in your mind, so that you could never forget them - "Another child may cost her her life’? She could see the face of the doctor who had said the words, as she struggled back to life six years ago, leaving behind in the darkness the little daughter she had craved. And now, in spite of all their care, she was carrying another -- no kindly providence this, but a cruel, scheming Nature caring nothing: for the individual in her concern for the race. So Margaret had thought in her bitterness, and the weeks and months had passed in a jumbled state of rebellion and longing, of fear and hope -~ hope, in spite of all, from which had grown this ache for reassurance, for something, someone, to whom to cling, as a source of courage. 

All they gave her was words, words. What did it amount to, this presence in the midst, this God who was man? How could He, or any men, understand? 

Suddenly the séat at her side was no longer empty. Silence ruled over all as before, no one had moved, but Margeret knew, with certainty, that someone was beside her. She would not turn her head, for she knew there was nothing eye could see, but whispering from far beneath her reasoning mind, came her voices: 

"So it's You," 

"Yes, it's I," He said. 

“Why have You come?" she asked, fighting against Him. "You, born a man, how can you know what we women face and bear?" 

"I know," He said, ‘and understand." 

"But how?" she protested. 

Then, did he tell her or just show her in pictures? It was difficult to say, but the dull cream wall had vanished, and she was looking into a little dark house where a woman moaned in labour. 

"Run for the old woman" she cried, and He ran, like the wind for she was His mother and He the eldest son.

"Can I help?" He gasped, panting back with the wise woman and she shook her head 

“Help by getting the little ones out of the way," she said and He gathered the little brothers and sisters and led them out to the fields. He talked of flowers and birds, He set them playing and laughing, but his heart was back there in the dark house, suffering as she suffered, and His eyes grew dark with pity as he knew at last what she had borne for Him. If it was like this, here, among her friends, what had it been like to travel those long miles with her time at hand? His body felt the stumbles of the donkey on the rough road, His eyes started with tears as He saw her. already in her pain, begging entrance at door after doors sinking down at Last among the straw of a stable to face her ordeal with the beasts. 

The scene faded, and the figuré at Margaret's side said softly: "It was then I knew what she had borne for me, and understood what all women bear."

 "You knew it then," argued Margaret, fighting still, “but you would soon forget. When you were a man though, you talked to women, and were kind to them, did you ever once think of the ones like me?" 

“There was a day," went on the voice, “when I had to tell my people of the terrors that should come, when I talked to them of sack and pillage, when I drew for them a picture of men and women seizing their few belongings and flying for safety to the hills. You remember?" 

She remembered; she had known her Bible well in the old days. 

"I saw it so clearly," He said, and His voice was deep with pity, "those people of mine, running, escaping, leaving behind all that they loved, and I saw among them those that suffered most, the women stumbling with their heavy load, suffering as she suffered on the long, rough road from Nazareth to Bethlehem. I forgot the : men pressing round Me, and my eyes sought those of the women who watched from the outskirts of the crowd. It was to them I gave My message of sympathy ;'Woe unto them that are with child in those days ... and pray ye that it be not in winter.' 

"You didn't forget," whispered Margaret, and again the voice repeated: "I did not forget. I remembered -- right to the end.", and for a moment there flashed a picture of a cross and One who thought of His mother at the last. 

Margaret's hand stole out to the empty chair, and remained there. Silence still reigned over the meeting, but it was a silence full of meaning, of mystery, filled with the invisible and the inaudible. A gentle stir moved the gathering, and one by one the still figures relaxed and moved in their chairs. 

The woman on Margaret's other side turned slowly and stretched a hand. "Good morning, friend," she said, softly. "We've had a wonderful meeting this morning." 

SUSAN.