, the
inconsistency between their professions of faith and their daily lives;
he had humbled himself before his ideals and sought to make them do
likewise; and now, very gently, he was asking for the verdict.

He paused for a moment before his last words, and swept the congregation
with his eyes. They saw far more than was there to see. They saw his
seminary days, when the world looked so simple and so enticing. They saw
the early days of his charge of St. Viateur's, when the knowledge of
actual achievement was not troubled by spiritual doubts. They saw the
Sundays, innumerable, when his words, received by the great ones of the
community with admiration and approval, had been followed by the little
flatteries to which no human heart is immune. Then a lump rose in his
throat, and his gaze came nearer. Something like tears came into his
eyes as he surveyed these friends whom he was deliberately transforming
into something perilously like enemies--for no reason save that he must.
They would never understand--never. And yet he must go on--to the end if
need be. That was his destiny.

Quietly he put his last question to them, "What are you going to do
about it?" Then he closed his eyes for a moment, opened them to stare
unseeing at judge and jury, sighed softly, and abruptly left the pulpit.

The answer was not long in coming. He knew that it would not be, and he
dallied in the vestry, purposely. Judge Wolcott, kindly and genial,
approached him with outstretched hand.

"Arnold, it was magnificent," he said, with a paternal clap on his
shoulder, adding, in an undertone, though no one was near, "but I don't
think I would repeat it."

"Why?" asked Imrie coldly.

The Judge tugged at his white beard nervously. Then he patted the
younger man again with what seemed like a somewhat exaggerated
friendliness.

"Oh, come now, Arnold, don't get on your high horse. You know what I
mean. That sort of thing's all right--occasionally. But it's
juvenile...."

"Juvenile?"

"Well, perhaps not that. But it's young, sophomoric, journalistic,
sentimental--you understand, I'm sure."

"Quite."

"We have some pretty conservative members here, you know. As laymen go,
they're powerful." He stopped and watched Imrie, waiting for the effect
of his words to sink in. "For a young man, practically at the outset of
his career, to offend them--would be unwise."

Imrie's coldness dissolved, and he smiled broadly.

"We know each other too wel