It was then that the trouble that had been smouldering for so long
between Thurston and the Master burst into flame. For half an hour the
Master lost his temper like an ordinary human being. Thurston said very
little but listened with a quiet and sarcastic smile. Then he went
away. Warlock was left in a torment of doubt and misery. That night he
was in his room, until the dawn, on his knees, wrestling with God. He
accused himself because, during these latter months, he had removed
himself from human contact with his congregation. He had been so intent
upon God that he had forgotten his flock. Now he hardly knew how to
approach them. The thought of a personal interview with the Miss
Cardinals, or Miss Pyncheon, or Mr. Smith filled him with a strange shy
terror. He seemed to have nothing more to say to them, and he blamed
himself bitterly because he had been intent upon his own salvation
rather than theirs.

Thurston's words sent him groping back through the details of the
visions. And there were no details. For himself there had been enough
in the light, the ecstasy, the contact, but these others who had not
themselves felt this, nor seen its glory, demanded more.

He began then, in an agony of distress, to question himself as to
whether he had not dreamt his visions. He wrestled with God, beseeching
Him to come again and give him a clearer message. Night after night
passed and he waited for some further vision, but nothing was granted
him. Then he thought that perhaps he himself was now cursed for leaving
God. God had come to him and revealed Himself to him in unmistakable
signs, and yet he was doubting Him and demanding further help.

As the weeks passed he perceived more and more clearly that there was
every kind of division and trouble in the Chapel. Many members left and
wrote to him telling him why they had done so. In his own household he
felt that Amy no longer gave him any confidence. She attended to him
more carefully than before, watched over him as though he were a baby,
but made no allusion to the services or the Chapel or any meeting. He
seemed, as the weeks passed, to be lonelier and lonelier, and he looked
upon this as punishment for his own earlier selfishness. He was pulled
then two ways. On the one hand it seemed to him that he would only hear
God's full message if he withdrew further and further from the world,
on the other he felt that he was letting his followers slip away from
him now at the ver