s confession. If he cheats there, he knows that he is cheating
nobody but himself, and might much better have stopped away altogether."

Theron nodded his head comprehendingly. He had a great many views about
the Romanish rite of confession which did not at all square with this
statement of the case, but this did not seem a specially fit time for
bringing them forth. There was indeed a sense of languid repletion in
his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for awhile.
He contented himself with nodding again, and murmuring reflectively,
"Yes, it is all strangely different."

His tone was an invitation to silence; and the doctor turned his
attention to the cigar, studying its ash for a minute with an air
of deep meditation, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series of
smoke-rings. Theron watched him with an indolent, placid eye, wondering
lazily if it was, after all, so very pleasant to smoke.

There fell upon this silence--with a softness so delicate that it came
almost like a progression in the hush--the sound of sweet music. For a
little, strain and source were alike indefinite--an impalpable setting
to harmony of the mellowed light, the perfumed opalescence of the air,
the luxury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a sweeping curve of
beauty, into a firm, calm, severe melody, delicious to the ear, but as
cold in the mind's vision as moonlit sculpture. It went on upward with
stately collectedness of power, till the atmosphere seemed all alive
with the trembling consciousness of the presence of lofty souls, sternly
pure and pitilessly great.

Theron found himself moved as he had never been before. He almost
resented the discovery, when it was presented to him by the prosaic,
mechanical side of his brain, that he was listening to organ-music, and
that it came through the open window from the church close by. He would
fain have reclined in his chair and closed his eyes, and saturated
himself with the uttermost fulness of the sensation. Yet, in absurd
despite of himself, he rose and moved over to the window.

Only a narrow alley separated the pastorate from the church; Mr. Ware
could have touched with a walking-stick the opposite wall. Indirectly
facing him was the arched and mullioned top of a great window. A dim
light from within shone through the more translucent portions of the
glass below, throwing out faint little bars of party-colored radiance
upon the blackness of the deep passage-way.