the blood rushed to his head, and strong emotions paralyzed his reason.
When he asked himself if it was right in England and in the nineteenth
century to contemplate a course which might have been proper to Palestine
and the first century, the answer came instantaneously that it _was_
right. Glory was in peril. She was tottering on the verge of hell. It
would not be wrong, but a noble duty, to prevent the possibility of such
a hideous catastrophe. Better a life ended than a life degraded and a
soul destroyed.

On this the sophism worked. It was true that he would lose her; she would
be gone from him, she who was all his joy, his vision by day, his dream
by night. But could he be so selfish as to keep her in the flesh, and
thus expose her soul to eternal torment? And after all she would be his
in the other world, his forever, his alone. Nay, in this world also, for
being dead he would love her still. "But, O God, must _I_ do it?" he
asked himself at one moment, and at the next came his answer: "Yes, yes,
for I am God's minister."

That sent him back to his text again. "Deliver him up to _Satan_----" But
there was a marginal reference to Timothy, and he turned it up with a
trembling hand. _Satan_ again, but the Revised Version gave "the Lord's
servant," and thus the text should read, "Deliver him up to the Lord's
servant for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord." This made him cry out. He drank it in with
inebriate delight. The thing was irrevocably decided. He was justified,
he was authorized, he was the instrument of a fixed purpose. No other
consideration could move him now.

By this time his heart and temples were beating violently, and he felt as
if he were being carried up into a burning cloud. Before his eyes rose
the vision of Isaiah, the meek lamb converted into an inexorable avenger
descending from the summit of Edom. It was right to shed blood at the
divine command--nay, it was necessary, it was inevitable. And as God had
commanded Abraham to take the life of Isaac, whom he loved, so did God
call on him, John Storm, to take the life of Glory that he might save her
from the risk of everlasting damnation!

There may have been intervals in which his sense of hearing left him, for
it was only now that he became conscious that somebody was calling to him
from the other side of the door.

"Is anybody there?" he asked, and a voice replied:

"Dear heart, yes, this five