"

"About the maid, surely; I cannot forget her, and indeed often think of
her since the day you brought me to her house and made me known unto
her, which was much courtesy to one who is fitter for a book-room than
a woman's company.

"She is fair of face and hath a pleasant manner, and surely beauty and
a winsome way are from God; there seemed also a certain contempt of
baseness and a strength of will which are excellent. Perhaps my
judgment is not even because Miss Carnegie was gracious to me, and you
know, John, it is not in me to resist kindness, but this is how she
seems to me. Has there been trouble between you?"

"Do not misunderstand me, Rabbi; I have not spoken one word of love to
. . . Miss Carnegie, nor she to me; but I love her, and I thought that
perhaps she saw that I loved her. But now it looks as if . . . what I
hoped is never to be," and Carmichael told the Queen Mary affair.

"Is it not marvellous," mused the Rabbi, looking into the fire, "how
one woman who was indeed at the time little more than a girl did carry
men, many of them wise and clever, away as with a flood, and still
divideth scholars and even . . . friends?

"It was not fitting that Miss Carnegie should have left God's house in
heat of temper, and it seemeth to us that she hath a wrong reading of
history, but it is surely good that she hath her convictions, and
holdeth them fast like a brave maid.

"Is it not so, John, that friends and doubtless also . . . lovers have
been divided by conscience and have been on opposite sides in the great
conflict, and doth not this show how much of conscience there is among
men?

"It may be this dispute will not divide you--being now, as it were,
more an argument of the schools than a matter of principle, but if it
should appear that you are far apart on the greater matters of faith,
then . . . you will have a heavy cross to carry. But it is my mind
that the heart of the maiden is right, and that I may some day see her
. . . in your home, whereat my eyes would be glad."

The Rabbi was so taken up with the matter that he barely showed
Carmichael a fine copy of John of Damascus he had secured from London,
and went out of his course at worship to read, as well as to expound
with much feeling, the story of Ruth the Moabitess, showing
conclusively that she had in her a high spirit, and that she was
designed of God to be a strength to the house of David. He was also
very cheerful in the morning,