The intensity was there, but much besides--and yet in all else this was a man as opposite to the aged veteran of the pulpit as east is far across from west. In all the fire of his words was no mention of the fires of hell. He seemed to know nothing of the avenging God, whose name had rung terribly from that rostrum for half a century: a God swift of anger and mighty to punish: an omnipotently jealous God. The Deity he served was one of infinite charity to whose forgiveness nothing was unforgivable--except unforgiveness.

He was expounding a doctrine of joy and aspiration: a splendid and uplifting message from a God of the onward and upward march. No suspicion came to him that, in effect, he was assailing the life work of the old man below him, whom he deeply revered, yet he breathed a conception of religion not only unlike, but contradictory to the set and riveted dogma of his listening predecessor.

Minds that had unquestioningly accepted the old and hard gospel of righteousness by duress of brimstone awoke to a new insurgency and eyes little given to the light of thought kindled to this new postulate of brotherhood and the service of brotherhood.

Conscience sat with her eyes hypnotically fixed on the face of the speaker. Yesterday afternoon he had gone sailing with her; to-day he was voicing her own beliefs from the pulpit whose former incumbent had strangled and throttled them with his tyranny of weakness.

Of her father and the influence this sermon might have on him she did not just then think at all. She like the others was being swept on a tide of rapt attention--and she had forgotten that William Williams was not at home in his study. But as that discourse progressed one might have followed the ebb and flow of a man's life-battle, had he watched only the face of the old man, in the wheel chair, crowned with a white mane.

First there was the expression of exaltation which mutely proclaimed: "A prophet is risen among us," but after it came swift doubt and foreboding. The eagle eyes, deep-set in the thin face, were clouded and hurt. Tho talon-like fingers clutched at their chair arms. Must he sit here constrained to silence, while another confounded his teachings?

After doubt came certainty under which the sunken eyes of the paralyzed man smouldered fiercely and his face blanched to the deadness of parchment. This was all a passionate and revolutionary appeal for liberality--or--by his interpretation--for license. It mounted into an indictment against the cramping evils of intolerance, it scathingly denounced the goodness of the strait-jacket until the old minister saw every effort of his life assailed and vilified. His mind, distorted by suffering and brooding, beheld a prophet indeed, but a prophet who carried Satan's commission and who dared to serve it in the house of God.

Would God himself remain silent and unavenging under such insult? He at least, the lifelong servant, would not sit voiceless while his Master was libeled. He who had spoken here many hundreds of times before would speak once more and his last message would be one of scourging from the temple desecrators more evil than money-changers.

But he shook with so palsied a fury that for a time he could only surrender to his physical weakness. With a mighty effort he braced his withered body and pulled himself forward. He knew he was killing himself, but he would fall at his sentry post, challenging the enemy.

Sam Haymond, himself oblivious until now to all but his own earnestness, brought his gaze back to the chair just below him--and suddenly the resonance of his swelling voice fell silent--snapped by astonishment with a word half spoken.

Of the tragedy which was acting itself before him he realized little. He saw only a venerable colleague stricken by some sudden and terrible ailment.

Then William Williams raised his thin arms above his head. Out of his eyes rained challenge, denunciation, anathema! Mutely he was hurling the curse of God's church. With the last ounce of his attenuated strength he was struggling for the voice which at this moment of supreme need had failed him. Over the body of the congregation, as the preacher halted, fell a deadly stillness.

From the throat of the old man came a strangled groan, which had sought to be a command for silence, and he crumpled forward. Life had gone out of him, and Sam Haymond, lifting both hands, spoke in a voice of hushed awe, "My brethren, the hand of God has fallen here."

CHAPTER XIX

About the churchyard, like sentinels of peace, stood ranks of elms and silver oaks. They had been old and gnarled of trunk, when the man whose life had just guttered out inside had come, young and militant, to preach the letter of that law, whose spirit was to his understanding a fourth dimension. Through the long windows of colored but artless glass, now partly raised, poured slanting panels of summer sun, mottling the interior and its occupants with dashes of red and blue.

Into the hush which had fallen there crept also those minors that seemed to belong rather to an exaggerated quiet than to sound: the trill of a bird, voicing an overflow of joy and the humming of bees among the vines of the church yard, where slanting headstones bore quaintly archaic names and life dates of sailors home from the sea. A wandering butterfly had drifted in and was winging its bright way about the place where the sermon had been interrupted. But the bated breath of awed amazement broke at the end of a long-held pause into a buzz of whispered exclamation.

Conscience rose unsteadily and started forward, her hands clutched to her breast, and the minister came hurriedly down the pulpit stairs.

Later in the day when the body still lay in the parlor of the Tollman house and Conscience sat almost as motionless near by, Eben Tollman paced the floor with features set in an expression unpleasantly suggestive of the undertaker's professional solemnity.

Possibly Tollman was not inconsolably cast down. So long as the old man's precarious life spark had been a danger signal, burning against the influence of Stuart Farquaharson, it was vital that he should live.

Now he was entitled to the serenity of a holy man's reward.

It was near to sunset when the husband left the room and the eyes of Conscience kindled for the first time out of their lethargic quiet.

Abruptly she rose from her seat and rebelliously demanded of the young minister, "What would you say if I should confess to you that just one thing has been clear and outstanding through all the confusion of my thoughts since this morning? I've been unspeakably sullen."

"I should say," he responded quietly, "that it is a guise which grief often assumes."

"No," she protested, disdaining the cajolery of self-delusion, "my sullenness isn't that sort. It's pure rebellion. I've been thinking of the abysmal failure of those who dedicate themselves most wholly. _His_ devotion to righteousness was implacably sincere and severe. It was the doctrine of the hair-shirt. He scorned to ride any wave ... he had to buffet every one head on ... until he battered out his life and wrecked himself."

"A man must serve as he reads his command," her companion reminded her.

"He has done his work as he conceived it."

"And yet--" she looked into his face with a deep questioning which held no note of accusation--"if anything that you said to-day is true, his whole effort was not only wasted but perverted, and it was true. It was so terribly true that it killed him!"

"What do you mean?" Haymond's gaze searched her eyes with incredulous amazement. It seemed to be making an effort to steady her against the wild utterances of hysteria, but her response was convincingly calm.

"I mean just that. I myself had nothing in common with his views. To me they seemed narrow--pitifully narrow and uncomprehending--and he was my father. We were warned that in any sudden gust of anger his feeble life spark--would go out, so I put my own conceptions of what counted behind me and tried to shield him." Sam Haymond hardly heard the last words. He could realize only the dazing and crushing import of his own unwilling instrumentality. At last he inquired slowly, "You mean that my sermon--that the things I said--" There he broke off and the distress in his eyes was so poignantly genuine that Conscience replied softly, "No, it wasn't you. It was Fate, I guess. Even I can't blame you. It only proves that the thing I warped my own life to prevent was inevitable--that's all."

For a little while the minister stood silent and across his face passed a succession of bewildered shadows.

"It is hard for me to grasp this," he said at last with a grief-laden voice. "It is hard for me to realize that two men serving the same God; both preaching His Word with identical earnestness could be so at variance that the concept of one should give mortal hurt to the other."

They sat in silence until the sunset pageantry had dimmed to twilight.

Then the man spoke again, guardedly.

"You said something about warping your life for your father's sake. I wonder if--well, I wonder if there's anything it would help you to talk about--not to the minister but to the friend."

She met his gaze with one of equal directness, and he could see an impulse, rather hungry and eager, dawn only to be repressed in her eyes.

At last she shook her head. "No," she answered. "But it's good of you to ask me. No, there's nothing that talking about will mend."

Eben Tollman's effort at being young was not wholly successful. There were times when even he suspected that it lacked something of complete attainment. He had now been married six months and his wife, though undeniably loyal, was as far as ever from kindling into that eager fire of complete love which he had boasted he would awaken in her.

When Conscience had warned him that their marriage would be an incomplete relationship Tollman had inwardly smiled. Of her faithfulness he could be sure and she herself would be his. The rest was a somewhat gossamer and idealistic matter which her youth exaggerated in importance.

But after six months, possession was no longer enough--and it was all he had. Sometimes indeed it seemed to him that the thing he lacked was greater than the sum of the things he possessed.

He had boasted that in indulging her wishes he found his highest privilege and pleasure, but he was of those who take their pleasures sadly. He had given her unrestricted permission to remodel his house, yet in every fresh detail of the alteration he discovered an act of vandalism under which his spirit writhed.

To his mind everything gained in sanctity by its age: the moth-eaten furniture was hallowed by tradition. The rheumatic old dog of uncertain breed, to which he had never vouchsafed a caress became now, when banished to the stable, a tried and faithful companion relegated to exile.

Privacy, he conceived as a matter of being shut in, and a house without cobwebbed shadows became a place bereft of decent seclusion. About him, now, all this undesirable metamorphosis was taking place.

"What is this room, my dear?" he inquired one morning as he spread before him on the breakfast table blue prints, while Conscience was pouring his coffee.

A shaft of early light tilting obliquely through the window fell on her head, making a soft nimbus about her dark hair and bringing out the exquisite color of her face. As Tollman looked up, raising the plans with a finger indicating the spot in question, he recognized the radiance of youth which could, under such a searching brilliance, remain flawless. He felt in contrast old and sluggish of life current.

"That?" Conscience's brows were lifted in surprise. "Why, Eben, you've been over those plans a half-dozen times. Surely you're familiar with them. That's your bed-room."

"And this one?" He shifted his finger and his face clouded.

"That's mine."

"Separate apartments?" he inquired dryly, though he was, as she had said, discovering no new cause of displeasure.

"Certainly."

"And three baths, and a garage and a car--and a terrace." He paused and his face fell into a sullen and stubborn expression. After a moment he added coldly, "That's all going to run into money."