r," perhaps best expresses the daily burden of his
accumulating apprehension. "He is leading up to something that makes me
shrink--something not quite legitimate. Playing with an Olympian fire
that may consume us both." And there his telegram stopped; for how in
the world could he put into mere language the pain and distress involved
in the thought that it might at the same time consume Miriam? It all
touched appalling depths of awe in his soul. It made his heart shake. The
girl had become a part of his very self.

Vivid reactions he suffered, alternating with equally vivid enthusiasms.
He realized how visionary the clergyman's poetical talk was, but the next
minute the practical results staggered him again, as it were, back into a
state of conviction. For the poetry obscured his judgment and fired his
imagination so that he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it was
not only illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effects
stared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is waste of
time. One must act.

Yet how "act?" The only way that offered he accepted: he fell back upon
the habits of his boyhood, read his Bible, and at night dropped humbly
upon his knees and prayed.

"Keep me straight and pure and simple, and bless ... Miriam. Grant
that I may love and strengthen her ... and that my love may bring her
peace ... and joy ...and guide me through all this terror, I beseech
Thee, into Truth...."

For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even admit that it
was love; feeling only the highest, he could not quite correlate his
sweet and elevated passion with the common standards of what the World
called love. The humility of a great love is ever amazing.

And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for ordinary
protection from the possible results of Skale's audacity. The Love of God
he could understand, but the Wrath of God was a conception he was still
unemancipated enough to dread; and a dark, portentous terror that Skale
might incur it, and that he might be dragged at its heels into some
hideous catastrophe, chased him through the days and nights. It all
seemed so unlawful, impious, blasphemous....

"... And preserve us from vain presumptions of the heart and brain, I
pray Thee, lest we be consumed.... Please, O God, forgive the insolence
of our wills ... and the ignorant daring of our spirit.... Permit
not the innocent to suffer for the guilty ... and especially