“YOU DON’T KNOW MR. IMRIE”

The news of Judith’s “mad whim” spread rapidly through Braeburn, and various were the comments it evoked. For the most part they savoured of condolence, although there was some sentimental approbation for what was characterised by one enthusiast as the “nobility” of her course. This had its effect upon Roger, and in time, he also came to feel admiration for her, and then, as a natural consequence of his own participation in the affair, he came to feel an admiration for himself. From out and out hostility to the idea, therefore, he changed insensibly to ardent and voluble sympathy.

At first Judith had admitted to herself quite frankly that the situation bore possibilities of annoyance. Aside from her guest’s potentially dangerous familiarity with her daily life, she sensed in him a certain lack of knowledge or at least of observance of those social amenities upon which her training, more than her instinct, let her to place considerable emphasis. It was with this feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between them, that she approached their first meeting after the accident. And it was with no little embarrassment, therefore, that she entered his room.

The lines of pain had disappeared from his face, and the removal of the stubble which had covered his chin when they had had their first encounter, together with his rest, and though she did not suspect that several meals much more bounteous than those to which he was accustomed, had improved his appearance surprisingly. He greeted her unaffectedly.

“Hello,” he said. “I’ve been waiting to see you. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am for all this.”

“And I,” she cried, “can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that it all happened. I....”

“Well, then,” he said with a smile which revealed two rows of strong, even and very white teeth, “let’s not either of us try.”

That seemed to break the ice, and because he appeared to feel no embarrassment, she found that hers had quite left her. Before she realised it, the morning was well advanced, and when she left him it was with a curious feeling that they had known each other for years and years ... very well.

And that was only the beginning of the very odd, but very real, friendship which sprang up between them. It would have surprised perhaps shocked her friends to know how much time she spent with him; but it would have shocked them still more to know the topics of the conversations between them. She herself was amazed every time she left him; not at the range and depth of his interests and his knowledge but at her own. He seemed to evoke ideas and words that she had never dreamed were there. It struck her as little short of sorcery.

But the situation was not wholly pleasant. There were little rifts to mar the lute. The first came after several weeks. It was Roger who introduced it.

“Say, Judith,” he said suddenly, one night at dinner, “Good’s going to be up and around pretty soon. You can’t keep him cooped up there forever, you know. When are you going to have him down to meals?”

He voiced a question which had been occurring with troublesome frequency in her own mind. She was silent for a moment, as she struggled with a decision she could no longer evade. It was a curious predicament in which events had placed her not easy to understand readily. It was indisputable that Good was ignorant of either the theory or practice of those conventions of the table upon which, against her will, she set much store. It was equally certain that he was quite conscious of his deficiencies in that respect. Were she in his place, she told herself, she would prefer not to suffer the embarrassments which the contrasts between themselves and him must entail. But on the other hand, did she not perhaps over-emphasise his sensitiveness, and was it not more than probable that to his sense of proportion her conception of the manner of human intercourse was absurd, if not pitiful? She found herself in a situation where, in an effort to be kind, she might be cruel. And what was to her merely tact, might be to him pure snobbishness. That settled the problem. She could not risk even the appearance of pettiness. The decision made her realise, as nothing else had, how much his judgments had come to mean to her.

“You’re right, Roger,” she said finally; “we’ll have him down to-morrow.”

Roger looked at her quizzically.

“Where?” he asked.

“Where?” She affected bewilderment.

“Yes. Here ... or alone ... or...?”

She struggled momentarily.

“Why, here of course with us,” she said firmly. Then very quickly, and with finality, she changed the subject. It was a trifling incident; but had she settled all later problems as she settled that one, the course of her life would have been changed completely.

These were agreeable days, on the whole, for Judith and her guest, but not for Roger. Pursuant to his sister’s ultimatum and his own high resolution taken thereon, he had fared forth, paladin-like, to conquer that mysterious world wherein men bought and sold all manner of things, not excluding themselves. But it had proven anything but the high road to glory that he had secretly anticipated; he shivered lances daily with an intangible enemy which neither showed its face nor gave its name, but before which he seemed quite powerless.

He had gone first, as he said he would, to Judge Wolcott, and had, with perhaps less humility than he himself thought he was displaying, but with more than might naturally have been expected, announced his readiness to consider any satisfactory (emphasised) “position” to which he might be directed.

To his resentment, not to say surprise, the Judge had first laughed unrestrainedly. But on realising the offence he was giving, which Roger was at no pains to conceal, he had become quite serious, and had directed the young man to a number of gentlemen, whose names he wrote out on a bit of cardboard.

These gentlemen, however, had proved to have their habitat behind corps of more or less impertinent menials. It had required very explicit answers to what he considered a great number of entirely unnecessary questions before he earned even the privilege of having his card presented.

Once in the inner sancta, however, he had been treated most courteously, the objects of his calls being impressed with the name of Wynrod no less than with that of Wolcott. But after the exchange of sundry pleasantries and compliments, he had invariably been shunted, though with exquisite tact and delicacy, on to someone else.

He had found this process of education in the ways of the business world excessively tiresome; but there was in his character a powerful, if inconspicuous, vein of obstinacy, and he stuck grimly to the task in hand. But he was nothing if not human, and his constant failure gradually wore down his courage. To advance slowly would be hard enough, he told himself; but not to move at all was altogether disheartening.

The natural consequence of it all was that he went into town later and later, and came out earlier and earlier. There even came days when he did not go in at all.

And the consequence of that was that he saw more and more of Good, with the result that he fell under the stranger’s spell even more completely than his sister had.

In that fact, curiously enough, Judith found something to reconcile her with the lad’s failure to consummate the task she had set for him. He might spend his time with worse men, she told herself, than with Brent Good. But she saw to it that the latter’s hours were not wholly spent with Roger.

As the stranger grew in strength, she procured him a pair of crutches, and with their aid, and that of the motor-car, they were able to take little jaunts off into the surrounding country-side. On these trips it almost brought the tears to her eyes to perceive the exquisite pleasure the sight and the smell of growing things seemed to give him.

“I’ve never known anyone who enjoyed the country as much as you do,” she said one day, after he had waxed particularly enthusiastic over a view from one of the near-by hills.

“I’ve never seen anything but city,” he answered. Then he added very simply: “I was pretty nearly a man before I saw my first cow.” His brow clouded reminiscently, and although she ached to draw him out on his past, his evident unwillingness to speak of it further made her hesitate.

Only once did he make any other reference to his childhood. She had been saying how difficult it was to make people spell her name correctly.

“You don’t have any difficulty there,” she added.

“Not much,” he admitted. “Queer name, isn’t it,” he said after a pause. “Queer the way I got it, too. Like to hear about that?”

She smiled at the innocence of the query, but forced herself merely to nod her head.

He smiled, and a curious expression of tenderness came into his eyes.

“You see, I was born without a name. That is, I never had any parents or never knew who they were, which amounts to the same thing. I was just one of those nameless little scraps of a city’s flotsam that get found on people’s doorsteps every now and then. That is, I think I was. I guess I was about five when I began to be conscious of self. As far back as I can remember, I was selling chewing gum and getting food by begging from restaurants at night and sleeping in doorways and packing-boxes. Then I sold newspapers, and got prosperous, and when I was about ten I guess it was ten you see, I don’t really know even how old I am I got into the hands, somehow or other, of an old Jew rags-old-iron man.” He was silent for a moment, and the expression of tenderness spread over his whole face. “He was a good sort that old kike. He fed me as well as he could which wasn’t very well and taught me to write and figure and read good books too. I knew the Public Library better than you know your own house. He didn’t just make me read books he made me like them. He’d come from Russia where he couldn’t get them, and he knew what books were. What your Church and brother and friends and home are to you, books were to old Zbysko. He taught me to love them, too. He did lots of things for me when doing things wasn’t easy. And he gave me the only name I ever had.”

“Your name? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, the old chap was a great believer in patent medicines. He honestly thought the men who made them were philanthropists. He gave me the name of one of them.” He laughed reminiscently. “I suppose I have one of the best known names in the world! I see it everywhere.”

“And the old man...?”

“They didn’t call it starvation doctors never do name things right. I think I was about thirteen then. They tried to send me to an institution, but I ran away. I’ve shifted for myself since.”

He lapsed into silence, and Judith could get no more out of him that day. He was too obviously busy with his memories.

One Sunday morning, about a month or so after the accident, Judith was struck by a whimsical idea. She broached it to her guest immediately.

“Mr. Good,” she said at breakfast, “I have a favour to ask of you....”

“It’s granted already,” he said gallantly.

“Wait it may not prove so easy. I know you don’t care for church-going, but I want you to go with me this morning.”

He looked dejected. “I should be delighted honestly. But look ” He indicated his old brown suit, which in spite of the constant and earnest endeavours of Roger’s valet, still looked indisputably shabby.

“No matter. We’ll go late and sit in the back and nobody will see us. But here’s the real favour. There’s to be a clergyman out from the city, this morning, who is a friend of mine. Arnold Imrie is to preach, and ...”

“Is Arnold coming?” broke in Roger. “By George, I’ll go myself. He’s a wonder.”

“That’s what I wanted to find out,” said Judith. “That is, I want to find out if you think so, Mr. Good. The people here think just that. I want to get your opinion.”

“That’s hardly fair, is it, Miss Wynrod? He’s a personal friend of yours, and you know already what I think of church yet you want my opinion of both.”

“No not both; just the man.”

Good shook his head. “I doubt if they can be separated,” he said dubiously.

“Well, we’ll worry about that later. It’s settled that you’ll come?”

“Of course, but ”

“Thank you. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

All the way to the church Good protested that she was taking an unfair advantage of him. But Judith refused to heed his protests.

They paused for a moment on the low rise overlooking the church, to survey it. Judith was very fond of its weathered grey stones, almost buried in the luxuriant ivy. She had been christened and confirmed in it, and the stained glass windows at opposite ends of the transept masterpieces they were, too were gifts of hers, in memory of her long-dead father and mother. It was an exquisite little edifice, a genuine bit of Tudor, without a particle of “adaptation,” looking as if it had been transplanted bodily from some English vale, together with the soil upon which it stood, and the well trimmed trees which surrounded it. She felt a little catch in her throat, as the memories clustered before her.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Good slowly. “It’s pretty....”

She did not like the hesitant qualification implied in his tone.

“Is there a reservation?”

“Well,” he cocked his head on one side, and knitted his brows. “Yes. It’s too beautiful. It’s beauty in the wrong place. The people out here have beauty enough without it. I’d like it better if it was in the city in the heart of the city with its trees and its vines and its grass. It’s needed more there.” Then he laughed. “Oh, Miss Wynrod, you must be careful what you ask me. I’m a queer fellow. Most of the things you think are all right, I think are all wrong. You’d have to have lived my life to see things the way I see them.”

She was vaguely disappointed and hurt, and she made no attempt to reply. Every now and then he did bewilder her by flights of thought which she found herself incapable of following. Usually she tried to argue, but the little church was too intimate a thing for that. She said nothing, and silently they went on into it.

She had timed their arrival carefully so as to get there just before the sermon, and unobtrusively they slipped into one of the side pews in the rear. But the building was so small that they had a very good view of the Reverend Arnold Imrie, sometime stroke of the Yale crew, Fellow of Oxford, and one of the strongest heads that ever succumbed to a Heidelberg kneipe.

He was a well-built, good-looking young man, with close cropped curly blonde hair, and a clear skin and eyes. His complexion was ruddy, but bronzed, as if he were still not unused to out-of-doors. Yet there were two lines between his eyes, and a stoop to his shoulders that seemed to betoken an equal familiarity with the study. Indeed his whole manner and appearance gave the same paradoxical impression. It seemed to Good, as he studied him, that Doctor Imrie was the product of a victory of the mind over the body. He was the conscious ascetic, triumphing over the instinctive sensualist. It was not hard to imagine that the clergyman was very fond of the good things of the world, however much he might neglect them in favour of the things of the spirit.

And in that estimate he was substantially correct. Imrie had gone into the ministry, not really from choice, but from a painfully acute sense of duty inherited from his Knoxian forbears. Contradicting an abounding vitality was an overwhelming consciousness of sin, based, it must be confessed, on a fair modicum of actuality, impelling him, irresistibly, toward a fear and a hatred of the flesh. Some men enter the Church positively, out of love for their God and their fellow men: but Imrie had entered it negatively, from a fear and a distrust of the devil in himself. Of his fellow men, in the mass, at least, he never thought at all.

All these things Good sensed very clearly. But, he thought to himself, Imrie was a young man, whose life had progressed in one channel ... and there were a great many channels in the world. If anything should ever occur to move him from his channel, a great many things might happen. There were more Imries than the congregation, gazing respectfully with tranquil eyes, saw.

It was quite characteristic of Imrie’s neglect for the human equation in life, that he should choose for his text that morning, the Evils of Idleness when fully two-thirds of his auditors represented the very apotheosis of idleness. But it was equally explanatory of his popularity among them. He had the faculty, wholly unconscious though it was, of being able to castigate them eloquently for their sins, but in such an abstract and impersonal fashion as to leave them quite untroubled at its close.

His words, now, uttered with unquestioned sincerity, were hot and forceful, his logic clear, his conclusions inescapable. He spoke eloquently, his manner was impressive, and his delivery beyond criticism. His hearers gave him their closest attention. Many of them heard so well that later they would recall graphic bits, to quote, and to use as explanation of their admiration of him. But not a brow clouded. Not a soul was pained. He never perturbed his congregation. Judge Wolcott expressed its feelings when he said, “I like to hear Arnold preach because it brightens the day for me.” Imrie was hardly a Savonarola.

They had had disagreeable preachers at Braeburn, once or twice. One was a particular disappointment. He was a missionary bishop from somewhere in Africa, and the renown of his exploits had filled every seat. But he proved to be an unattractive little man, with a falsetto voice and shabby clothes, who not only spoke very badly, but who said some very unnecessary and unpleasant things. Arnold Imrie was different. He spoke their language, and they understood him. He was one of them. He had grown up in their midst. Many of them called him by his first name. He was perhaps a trifle too serious to people who found life rather more amusing than otherwise, but on the whole they thought him more than satisfactory. He was a gentleman. He was good. He was sincere. He was orthodox. He never failed to point out the error of their ways but he never failed to do it with subtlety. And in a day when so many clergymen were allowing themselves to wander into undesirable, if not absolutely forbidden fields, he stuck to religion, where he belonged. And he was not only delightful in the pulpit, but one could ask him to dine, with perfect confidence in the result. As Good listened he turned to survey the congregation. There was unqualified approval on every face. He listened for a moment or two longer. Then he smiled faintly, as one might at a play he has seen several times, and fell to counting the ticking of his watch, wondering how much longer the sermon would last.

Nor was his impatience lost on Judith.

But Imrie never preached long sermons. In a very few minutes he had wound up with his usual stirring peroration, and left the pulpit. Good had an almost irresistible impulse to clap, not as expressing approbation, but admiration for a difficult task well done. He smiled not wholly pleasantly at the look of devout complacency on the faces of all the well dressed men and women about him. Not one, he reflected, who had listened so attentively to this stirring denunciation of idleness, knew what real toil was or had any desire to know. He wanted to rush to the pulpit himself and tell them what it was. But he followed Judith out quietly enough.

She had planned their exit so as to be well in advance of the crowd, but she could not miss them all. She was irritated at the curious glances flung at her and her companion, though she tried not to notice them. It was only when a bow was quite unavoidable that she acknowledged it. She was angry with herself for her self-consciousness. But when she glanced at her companion, with his spotted, weather-beaten, shapeless suit, and his antiquated, sun-burned hat, not to speak of his lean and angular figure; and then at her own trim presence, she had to smile. They did present a curious spectacle, and the covert smiles were justified. Still she was honest enough to admit it it would please her more to see Good somewhat better dressed. It did not occur to her that it would please him too.

They walked along slowly for a little while, in silence. Good was the first to speak.

“The inside was beautiful, too. That carved oak was fine. Just enough carving. Not too much. Usually there is. And the windows the sunlight filtering in through that one on the left was like the organ when the vox humana pedal is on all shimmering. It was very beautiful. So restful. All churches should be like that. The Catholics have the right idea. It....”

“And the sermon?” she broke in quizzically.

He stopped short and looked at her narrowly. Her faint smile was not lost on him.

“Now, Miss Wynrod that isn’t fair,” he expostulated. “I told you not to do that. Really....”

“But that’s what I brought you for,” she said. “Of course you like the church. Anyone would. But I want to know about the rest of it. You promised, you know.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “Well,” he said finally, “let’s wait till we get to that bosky dell up there. Then we can sit down and have it out.”

When they were seated, Good fell to toying with a stick, and making little circles in the sand. She waited patiently for him to begin. Finally he raised his head and looked at her half timorously from under his bushy eyebrows.

“You won’t be angry or disgusted if I tell you what’s on my mind?” he inquired.

“Have I ever been?”

“No you’ve been quite remarkable in that respect,” he admitted. “But this is different.”

“Go on don’t excuse yourself any more.”

“Well, his text ... they nearly lynched a priest out in Colorado for that. You see, he was preaching to strikers, and when he told them that idleness was the root of all evil ... you couldn’t hardly blame them, now could you?”

She laughed at that. “But there aren’t any strikers here,” she persisted.

“No, but to talk about idleness is almost as pointless here as there. Why didn’t he say something that would get under their hides? Look at them coming up the street. Do they look as if they had been filled with a fear of the Lord?”

“Do you think people go to church to be frightened?”

“I’m sure I don’t know why they go,” he said cheerfully. “I never could. I’d rather do almost anything. Church-going always irritates me. The preachers are so spineless like this Mr. Imrie. He had a good theme. But he didn’t carry it out. Maybe he didn’t know how. Maybe he didn’t dare....”

“You don’t know Mr. Imrie,” she said. “He’d dare anything.”

“All right. But that doesn’t change what would happen if he did dare, or did know. I’ve read the Bible quite a bit. Suppose Jesus came back and got up in the pulpit and lit into his congregation the way he lit into the money changers ’vipers’ and all that? Why, the vestry would have his scalp before the sun set, wouldn’t they?”

“You seem to be rather hostile to religion, Mr. Good,” said Judith, vaguely offended.

He shrugged his shoulders in a manner indicative of helpless annoyance.

“Oh, Miss Wynrod I didn’t expect that of you. That’s what they all say. Roast the established Church and they call you an atheist or worse. I’m not opposed to religion why should I be? I can’t say I dislike the air I breathe, can I? But I haven’t much use for an organisation that doesn’t live up to its confession of faith. Here are your Christian Churches, founded on a rebellion against hypocrisy and privilege and materialism, deliberately encouraging complacency and selfishness and peace and quiet and oh everything that its founder got crucified for. I’ve come to know Jesus pretty well. I like him. He’s the kind of leader men want to follow. If he was alive to-day I’d be one of his lesser disciples. And I’ll bet a dollar that all your eloquent, dogmatic, spiritual, irrelevant Imries would be running to the local Pilate to have us jugged!”

“What makes you think you know Jesus better than our Imries?” she asked softly.

“I don’t,” he answered earnestly. “Knowing people is a subjective affair. I know you as one person. Your brother knows you as another. You may know yourself as very different from either of the two. It’s the same way with Jesus. We both made his acquaintance in the same way, so we are both entitled to our opinion. But look here. You think Imrie’s nearer to Jesus than I am, don’t you?”

“Why, really, I....” she stammered and coloured slightly.

“Of course you do. Well, I ask you this. Do you honestly think that Imrie’s Jesus the Jesus he serves up to you on Sundays, the cold, logical, snobbish abstraction would ever have gotten anybody so sore that they’d crucify him? Of course you don’t. Well what do you think that congregation would do to me if I got up in the pulpit and gave my Jesus the fiery, human, uninspired, blood-red revolutionary that I conceive him to be? You know without my telling you. Why, they’d have me arrested if I used his own thoughts expressed in modern language yes, if I used his actual words and applied them. Suppose Imrie took that stuff about the millstone, and applied it to Corey’s cash girls and delivery boys. Do you think the old man would be anxious to hear Imrie again?”

“You seem to have thought a great deal about Jesus,” said Judith, with a faintly veiled sarcasm. But he did not sense that.

“Yes,” he said naively. “Haven’t you?”

She was silent at the unconscious rebuke, profoundly stirred by the paradoxicality of the situation. She wanted to answer him in the affirmative, wanted to very, very much. But she knew that she could not. Jesus was not the living, breathing companion of every day that he seemed to be to this irreverent infidel. He was far more sacred to her, but far less a vital factor in the commonplaces of existence. She was honest enough to admit it. But he appeared not to notice her tacit confession.

“You see,” he went on patiently, as if expounding a very simple problem to a rather young and stupid child, “your stained-glass faith isn’t founded on Jesus at all. You’re a Paulist. Like him, you’re a Roman citizen, an aristocrat, a mystic. Jesus wasn’t any of those things. He was the next thing to a slave, a man of the common people, and for all purposes of comparison, a thorough-going materialist. He had no dogma to preach, other than that the kingdom of the earth should belong to the dwellers therein. But Paul was a different sort of chap. He changed the propaganda so that it read ‘kingdom of heaven,’ which was a very different thing, and much more comfortable for the shaking seats of the mighty. Then the Greek philosophers got interested in that strange abortion called Christianity, added Eleusinian mysteries and what not, devised the doctrine of the immaculate conception to cover the illegitimacy of Jesus, adapted the idea of the trinity from Egyptian theology and....”

“You must study a great deal, too?” she asked, breaking in on the fluent rush of his words.

“Yes,” he said, almost apologetically; “it’s great stuff. I like it.”

Again she was silenced by the ingenuousness of his reply. She was puzzled. She had thought she possessed a religion of conviction, but she realised, in a sudden panic, that she had not. She had been born to her faith as she had been born to her wealth and her position in society. She did not dodge the consequent thought it could be taken from her as easily as the other things. This vagabond before her had been born with nothing not even a name but what he had was his own. His very impudence before sacred matters, the freedom with which he disregarded the eminence of people and ideas, betokened his superiority to her. She wanted to be disdainful, angry, displeased with him. She could not be. She was humbled before the power of his faith, as she had never in her life been humbled before the faith of Imrie. Though Good did not suspect it, she was, in a way, at a crisis.

She was silent for a little while. Then she rose with a smile.

“Well, Mr. Good, I’m not a match for you in these matters, but Mr. Imrie is coming to supper to-night and you can have it out with him face to face.”

“I’d be glad to,” said Good as he scrambled to his feet, very awkwardly. “But it wouldn’t be any use. That’s another reason for my dislike of clergymen. You can’t argue with them. The major premise, though it isn’t expressed of course, when you start off, is that they are right and you are wrong. They are trying to convince you always never to learn. They can go back to supernatural inspiration and I can’t so the argument stops before it starts. You can’t do much, you know, with a man who’s absolutely convinced that he’s got a pipe line direct to eternity. But I’ll be polite to him. I’ll try to forget that he’s a parson and only remember that he’s your friend.”

Judith smiled furtively at this magnanimous offer. It was so characteristic of the man. If there was a drop of sycophantic blood in his veins, he had yet to reveal it. And it was this sublime confidence in himself which formed one of his most potent charms for her. From birth she had been waited upon, with varying degrees of servility, depending upon the station and the hopes of those who waited. There were servants. There were young men, of varying degrees of attractiveness, station, and impecuniousness, who wanted to marry her. There were beggars, of varying degrees of honesty, who wanted her to aid them. There were the proponents of various charitable schemes, with varying degrees of sincerity and intelligence, who wanted her to sign the cheques. And in addition to those who merely wanted money, were the great swarm of both sexes, who sought the smile of her social favour, who delighted to be seen with her, to have her accept their attentions, to be invited to her functions. There had been very few people in her life who were there with a wholly disinterested purpose. And even the individuals who were disinterested or whom she thought disinterested had relatives who were not. In spite of her temperament, the circumstances of her birth and wealth had forced her to surround herself with a well-defined armour of suspicion. In Good’s lack of reverence, of tact, of taste, of manners, of anything approaching the conventions which made up her life, she found what she had craved. Of his utter clarity of soul there could be no doubt. She never once even suspected that he had a thought which he considered worth uttering, which, from motives of expediency, he did not utter. She had given him food and lodging. He had given her all he had to give his open heart. It was clear that he thought they were quits. And she was glad that he did. It was her first experience of such an exchange.

She smiled again as she recalled his promise not to enter into debate with Imrie. He would treat Imrie kindly for her sake. How Arnold would fume if he knew of such forbearance. And if Good only knew what he was saying ... well, she reflected, he would doubtless say it just the same!

At supper, true to his promise, Good was extremely taciturn. He appeared respectfully interested in all that Imrie had to say, joked pleasantly with Roger, was politely intimate with Judith, and to her very great astonishment, even went so far as to tell several very entertaining anecdotes of his experiences in the diamond mines of South Africa.

“Why,” she cried, “I never knew you had been there.”

“No,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a dry little twist to his lips, “I never told you.”

But after that he relapsed into comparative silence, and shortly after the meal, excused himself rather deftly, though none the less certainly, and went to his room.

Roger, as usual, had an engagement elsewhere, and presently he, too, departed. Judith and Imrie were left alone.

“That was a splendid sermon, Arnold,” she said, with an effort at enthusiasm, and a subconscious question as to whether she really meant what she said.

Imrie was thoughtful. “I did my best. The congregation seemed to like it. But it could be done much better.”

“So could most things.”

“Perfection is no trifle, is it,” he smiled. “But let’s not talk of such dreadful things as sermons. I haven’t seen you for ages....”

“Six weeks, to be exact,” she interrupted.

“Exactly!” he thanked her with his eyes for the implication, and woman-like, she took away his pleasure deliberately.

“The accident happened the day after you left.”

“Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “That was a splendid thing, Judith your taking that fellow in. Just like you. But hasn’t he been something of a well, a care?”

“On the contrary. I’ve enjoyed him intensely.”

“But don’t you find him a little uncouth?” he persisted.

“Yes very. But a little roughness is a relief after too much polish, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” he admitted. “But you wouldn’t confess even if you had been put out. And that’s like you, too.” He looked at her with an expression in his eyes, the meaning of which there could be no doubt.

“Let’s go out on the porch,” she said abruptly. “It’s so stuffy in here.”

The moon was full and it shone over a picture of loveliness. Below them, as they sat on the stone balustrade of the terrace, stretched Judith’s immaculate gardens, redolent with the soft perfume of sweet pea and mignonette. As the breeze faintly stirred the leaves, the shadows danced fantastically on the sod. Over in the velvet depths of the sunken tennis courts, the fireflies flashed their lanterns incessantly. Somewhere in the distance a guitar sounded now and again, and a woman’s voice rose and fell softly. It was very peaceful and pleasant, and Imrie, thinking of the hot city and the morrow, drew a deep sigh. No power on earth could prevent him from going back but he did not pretend to think that he wanted to go.

“Don’t you ever wonder what those crickets are saying?” asked Judith, conscious instinctively that her companion’s eyes still burned with the same light. “Just listen to them.”

“I’d rather have you listen to me,” said Imrie in a choking voice, as if struggling to control himself. Suddenly his hand shot out and caught hers in a grip like iron. “I want to tell you how much I love you!” he whispered passionately.

She looked at him for a long time without replying, and he could see by the movement of the shadows on her face, that her lip quivered. Her eyes glistened, too. Then, very slowly and thoughtfully, she withdrew her hand.

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair,” she repeated dully. “You promised not to.”

“I know, I know but I can’t help it, my darling. I love you so much. Nothing else matters. I can’t help telling you. I looked for you in church this morning and when I couldn’t find you, it was so hard to go on. I didn’t care, after that. It’s that way always. With you beside me it would be so different. Can’t you ... don’t you feel ... any different?”

She shook her head sadly. It was hard to refuse Imrie a million times harder than all the rest. That he loved her truly, there was no doubt in her mind. Of the others, she was not so sure. But she did not love him, and it hurt tremendously to tell him so. She could not tell why. He always begged her to give a reason, and she never could. He was a good man, and an attractive man. There was nothing lacking. As candid old Mrs. Waring had told her, “Don’t be a silly, my dear. You could not possibly do better.” She believed that, too. Imrie was as near her ideal as she had ever ventured to formulate one. And yet....

“But I thought ... the last time ...” he was saying. “It seemed as if ... there was more hope. And now ... it seems as if there was less. Why, my dearest? Have you changed? What have I done? What haven’t I done? You seem further away from me now than ever ... won’t you ever come to me ... is it always to be ’the desire of the moth for the star’ ... please speak to me, darling ... please....”

His voice broke under the stress of his emotion. Never had she seen him so moved. She marvelled at it. She had a turbulent wish to ask him why he never lost himself like that in his pulpit and immediately afterwards wondered where such an outrageous, irreverent thought could have come from. That was not like her. But she knew very well who it was like.

“Is there someone else?”

The question made her start guiltily. She was glad that her face was in shadow.

“Was there?” she asked herself. Then the absurdity of the thought made her smile to herself.

“No,” she said firmly. “There is no one else.”

“Then perhaps...?” His voice trailed off.

“Yes,” she said mechanically, as one who answered a question without hearing it, “perhaps.”

They were silent, then, for a long time. Finally Imrie held out his hand. His face, clear in the moonlight, was drawn and seemed pallid. He was visibly affected.

“I’m sorry, Judith,” he said, with a perceptible tremor in his voice, “but I can’t help it. Sometime perhaps....”

“Yes.” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she dared not trust herself to speak. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and comfort him. But she would do it as she would comfort Roger and he would know that. So she held out her hand.

“I’m sorry, too, Arnold. But let us be the good friends we have always been, anyway.”

She regretted that, as she saw him wince. It was not friendship that he wanted. But she forced herself to finish in that key. It was safest.

“I hope the plans for the new church are getting on famously?”

“Yes,” he said apathetically. “It’s doing very well.”

“You must bring out the sketches and let me see them. I’m tremendously interested.”

“I will mail them to you,” he said heavily. Slowly, as if reluctant, he took her hand again, held it just a moment, and then, with a suddenness that overwhelmed her, seized her in his arms and kissed her hotly on the lips. Then, like a shadow, he fled.

For a long time after he had gone Judith sat on the balustrade, listening to the myriad noises of the night, and pondering on what had befallen her. It had been a very eventful day. She smiled as she pondered on its contrasts. But she sobered as she thought of Imrie. She felt her cheek grow warm as she recalled his kiss. Then a faint smile widened her lips at the impetuosity of it. It was so unlike him. He had never shown such she knew he would call it disrespect but that was not the word she would use. She hoped he would not apologise. That would spoil it all. Perhaps if he were a little less respectful....

She could love Imrie the man, she reflected, as she walked slowly into the house. But Imrie the clergyman she knew for a certainty that that was impossible.