ermons better calculated, each in
its way, to win the approval of St. Antipas.

The call came and was accepted after the signs of due and prayerful
consideration. But as for Nancy, she had left off certain of her
wonderings forever.

CHAPTER VII

THERE ENTERETH THE SERPENT OF INAPPRECIATION

For the young rector of St. Antipas there followed swift, rich,
high-coloured days--days in which he might have framed more than one
triumphant reply to that poet who questioned why the spirit of mortal
should be proud, intimating that it should not be.

Also was the handsome young rector's parish proud of him; proud of his
executive ability as shown in the management of its many organised
activities, religious and secular; its Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew,
its Men's Club, Women's Missionary Association, Guild and Visiting
Society, King's Daughters, Sewing School, Poor Fund, and still others;
proud of his decorative personality, his impressive oratory and the
modern note in his preaching; proud that its ushers must each Sabbath
morning turn away many late-comers. Indeed, the whole parish had been
born to a new spiritual life since that day when the worship at St.
Antipas had been kept simple to bareness by a stubborn and perverse
reactionary. In this happier day St. Antipas was known for its advanced
ritual, for a service so beautifully enriched that a new spiritual
warmth pervaded the entire parish. The doctrine of the Real Presence was
not timidly minced, but preached unequivocally, with dignified boldness.
Also there was a confessional, and the gracious burning of incense. In
short, St. Antipas throve, and the grace of the Holy Ghost palpably took
possession of its worshippers. The church was become the smartest church
in the diocese, and its communicants were held to have a tone.

And to these communicants their rector of the flawless pulchritude was a
gracious spectacle, not only in the performance of his sacerdotal
offices, but on the thoroughfares of the city, where his distinction was
not less apparent than back of the chancel rail.

A certain popular avenue runs between rows of once splendid mansions now
struggling a little awkwardly into trade on their lowest floors, like
impoverished but courageous gentlefolk. To these little tragedies,
however, the pedestrian throng is obtuse--blind to the pathos of those
still haughty upper floors, silent and reserved, behind drawn curtains,
while the lower two floors