tion, and out of a quarter on
which she had set no watch, out of a wilderness which she had believed to
hold nothing save the ruined splendours of the past, had come one who,
like the traditional figures of the wilderness, had attracted her by his
very uncouthness and latent power. And the anomaly he presented in what
might be called the vehemence of his advocacy of an outworn orthodoxy,
in his occupation of the pulpit of St. John's, had quickened at once her
curiosity and antagonism. It had been her sudden discovery, or rather
her instinctive suspicion of the inner conflict in him which had set her
standard fluttering in response. Once more (for the last time--something
whispered--now) she had become the lady of the lists; she sat on her
walls watching, with beating heart and straining eyes, the closed helm
of her champion, ready to fling down the revived remnant of her faith as
prize or forfeit. She had staked all on the hope that he would not lower
his lance. . . . .

Saturday had passed in suspense . . . . And now was flooding in on
her the certainty that he had not failed her; that he had, with a sublime
indifference to a worldly future and success, defied the powers. With
indifference, too, to her! She knew, of course, that he loved her.
A man with less of greatness would have sought a middle way . . . .

When, at half past ten, she fared forth into the sunlight, she was filled
with anticipation, excitement, concern, feelings enhanced and not soothed
by the pulsing vibrations of the church bells in the softening air. The
swift motion of the electric car was grateful. . . But at length the
sight of familiar landmarks, old-fashioned dwellings crowded in between
the stores and factories of lower Tower Street, brought back
recollections of the days when she had come this way, other Sunday
mornings, and in a more leisurely public vehicle, with her mother.
Was it possible that she, Alison Parr, were going to church now? Her
excitement deepened, and she found it difficult to bring herself to the
realization that her destination was a church--the church of her
childhood. At this moment she could only think of St. John's as the
setting of the supreme drama.

When she alighted at the corner of Burton Street there was the
well-remembered, shifting group on the pavement in front of the church
porch. How many times, in the summer and winter, in fair weather and
cloudy, in rain and sleet and snow had she approached that group