ter mark of his achievement.

At length he finished his task, but not before sunset, and he felt weary
and hungry. He ate and rested. In the complete relaxation of mental
strain, he understood all at once what he had done. He had decided to
remain in Kansas City. But to remain meant to meet Mrs. Hooper day after
day, to be thrown together with her even by her foolishly confiding
husband; it meant perpetual temptation, and at last--a fall! And yet
God had guided him to choose that sermon rather than the other. He had
abandoned himself passively to His guidance--could _that_ lead to the
brink of the pit?... He cried out suddenly like one in bodily anguish.
He had found the explanation. God cared for no half-victories. Flight to
Chicago must seem to Him the veriest cowardice. God intended him to stay
in Kansas City and conquer the awful temptation face to face. When he
realized this, he fell on his knees and prayed as he had never prayed
in all his life before. If entreated humbly, God would surely temper the
wind to the shorn lamb; He knew His servant's weakness. "_Lead us not
into temptation_," he cried again and again, for the first time in his
life comprehending what now seemed to him the awful significance of the
words. "_Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil_"--thus he
begged and wept. But even when, exhausted in body and in mind, he rose
from his knees, he had found no comfort. Like a child, with streaming
eyes and quivering features, he stumbled upstairs to bed and fell
asleep, repeating over and over again mechanically the prayer that the
cup might pass from him.

On the Saturday morning he awoke as from a hideous nightmare. Before
there was time for thought he was aware of what oppressed and frightened
him. The knowledge of his terrible position weighed him down. He was
worn out and feverishly ill; incapable of reflection or resolution,
conscious chiefly of pain and weariness, and a deep dumb revolt against
his impending condemnation. After lying thus for some time, drinking
the cup of bitterness to the very dregs, he got up, and went downstairs.
Yielding to habit he opened the Bible. But the Book had no message for
him. His tired brain refused, for minutes together, to take in the
sense of the printed words. The servant found him utterly miserable and
helpless when she went to tell him that "the dinner was a-gittin' cold."

The food seemed to restore him, and during the first two hours of
diges