dogma for a new one of hell-as-a-state-of-mind. He was expounding that
doctrine this morning again. He had never heard any complaint of it. But
his mind was so far from his memory that he hardly knew what he had just
uttered. He wondered what he could have said to offend Miss Straley.

But he must not stand there gaping and wondering before his gaping and
wondering congregation. He must push on to his _lastly's_. His mind
retraced his words, and he repeated:

"What are the fleeting torments of this tenement of clay, mere bone and
flesh, to the soul's despair? Nothing! As I said before--nothing!"

And then he understood why Irene Straley had walked out. The realization
deranged him so that only the police-force every one has among his
faculties coerced him into going on with his sermon.

It was a good sermon. It was his own, too; for at last he had paid the
final instalment on the clergyman's library which contained a thousand
sermons as aids to overworked, underinspired evangelists. He had built
this discourse from well-seasoned timbers. He had used it in two pulpits
where he had visited, and now he was giving it to his own flock. He knew
it well enough to trust his oratorical machinery with its delivery,
while the rest of his mind meditated other things.

Often, while preaching, a portion of his brain would be watching the
effect on his congregation, another watching the clock, another thinking
of dinner, another musing over the scandals he knew in the lives of the
parishioners.

But now all his by-thoughts were scattered at the abrupt deed of Irene
Straley. She was the traffic of his other brains now, while his lips
went on enouncing the phrases of his discourse and his fists thudded the
Bible for emphasis. He was remembering his boyhood and his infatuation
for Irene Straley. That was before he was sure of his call to the
ministry. If he had married her, he might not have heard the call.

Doctor Crosson hoped that he was not regretting that sacrament! Sweat
came out on his brow as he understood the blasphemy of noting (even here
on the rostrum with his mouth pouring forth sacred eloquence) that Irene
Straley as she marched out of the church was still slender and flexile,
virginal. Doctor Crosson mopped his brow at the atrocity of his thoughts
this morning. The springtime air was to blame. The windows were open
for the first time. The breeze that lolled through the church had no
right there. It was irreverent an