manner which yesterday he would not have
thought possible. He had never before spoken so to one to whom he owed
reverence; neither had this one ever treated him so. His father had
stood always to him for uprightness and justice; he had no more
questioned these virtues in his father than in God. Words or acts of
either might be strange or incomprehensible, yet the virtues themselves
remained always beyond a doubt; and now, with the opening of the door
which his father's first decision had accomplished, a crowd of questions
and judgments had rushed in, and a pillar of earth and heaven was shaken
at last.... It is a dreadful day when for the first time to a young man
or maiden, any shadow of God, however unworthy, begins to tremble.

* * * * *

He understood presently, however, what an elder man, or a less childish,
would have understood at once--that these things must be dealt with one
by one, and that that which lay nearest to his hand was his own fault.
Even then he fought with his conscience; he told himself that no lad of
spirit could tolerate such insults against his love, to say nothing of
the injustice against himself that had gone before; but, being honest,
he presently inquired of what spirit such a lad would be--not of that
spirit which Marjorie would approve, nor the gentle-eyed priest he had
spoken with....

Well, the event was certain with such as Robin, and he was presently
standing at the door of his room, his boots drawn off and laid aside,
listening, with a heart beating in his ears to hinder him, for any sound
from beneath. He did not know whether his father were abed or not. If
not, he must ask his pardon at once.

He went downstairs at last, softly, to the parlour, and peeped in. All
was dark, except for the glimmer from the stove, and his heart felt
lightened. Then, as he was cold with his long vigil outside his bed, he
stirred the embers into a blaze and stood warming himself.

How strange and passionless, he thought, looked this room, after the
tempest that had raged in it just now. The two glasses stood there--his
own not quite empty--and the jug between them. His father's chair was
drawn to the table, as if he were still sitting in it; his own was flung
back as he had pushed it from him in his passion. There was an old print
over the stove at which he looked presently--it had been his mother's,
and he remembered it as long as his life had been--it was of Christ