his means would allow, but none of them
loved him or did more than stoically accept him and his services.

"Look at us as we stand together," he said to Baird on an evening when
they stood side by side within range of an old-fashioned mirror. "Those
things your reflection represents show me the things I was born without.
I might make my life a daily crucifixion of self-denial and duty done at
all costs, but I could not wear your smile or speak with your voice. I am
a man, too," with smothered passion; "I am a man, too! And yet--what
woman looks smilingly at _me_--what child draws near unafraid?"

"You are of the severe monastic temperament," answered Baird. "It is all
a matter of temperament. Mine is facile and a slave to its emotions.
Saints and martyrs are made of men like you--never of men such as I am."

"Are you sure of the value to the world of saints and martyrs?" said
Latimer. "I am not. That is the worst of it."

"Ah! the world," Baird reflected. "If we dare to come back to the
world--to count it as a factor----"

"It is only the world we know," Latimer said, his harsh voice unsteady;
"the world's sorrow--the world's pain--the world's power to hurt and
degrade itself. That is what seems to concern us--if we dare to say
so--we, who were thrust into it against our wills, and forced to suffer
and see others suffer. The man who was burned at the stake, or torn in
the arena by wild beasts, believed he won a crown for himself--but it was
for _himself_."

"What doth it profit a man," quoted Baird, vaguely, but as if following a
thought of his own, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Latimer flung back his shock of uneven black locks. His hollow eyes
flashed daringly.

"What doth it profit a man," he cried, "if he save his own soul and lose
the whole world, caring nothing for its agony, making no struggle to help
it in its woe and grieving? A Man once gave His life for the world. Has
any man ever given his soul?"

"You go far--you go far!" exclaimed Baird, drawing a short, sharp breath.

Latimer's deep eyes dwelt upon him woefully. "Have you known what it was
to bear a heavy sin on your soul?" he asked.

"My dear fellow," said John Baird, a little bitterly, "it is such men as
I, whose temperaments--the combination of forces you say you lack--lead
them to the deeds the world calls 'heavy sins'--and into the torment of
regret which follows. You can bear no such burden--you have no such
regre