d at a very slow pace, Mr.
Ware," he continued, chuckling softly, "to have arrived merely at the
collapse of the New Jerusalem. I fancied I had given him time enough to
bring you straight up to the end of all of us, with that Chinaman of
his gently slapping our graves with his pigtail. That's where the doctor
always winds up, if he's allowed to run his course."

"It has all been very interesting, extremely so, I assure you," faltered
Theron. It had become suddenly apparent to him that he desired nothing
so much as to make his escape--that he had indeed only been waiting for
the host's return to do so.

He rose at this, and explained that he must be going. No special effort
being put forth to restrain him, he presently made his way out, Father
Forbes hospitably following him down to the door, and putting a very
gracious cordiality into his adieux.

The night was warm and black. Theron stood still in it the moment the
pastorate door had closed; the sudden darkness was so thick that it
was as if he had closed his eyes. His dominant sensation was of a deep
relief and rest after some undue fatigue. It crossed his mind that
drunken men probably felt like that as they leaned against things on
their way home. He was affected himself, he saw, by the weariness and
half-nausea following a mental intoxication. The conceit pleased him,
and he smiled to himself as he turned and took the first homeward steps.
It must be growing late, he thought. Alice would be wondering as she
waited.

There was a street lamp at the corner, and as he walked toward it he
noted all at once that his feet were keeping step to the movement of
the music proceeding from the organ within the church--a vaguely
processional air, marked enough in measure, but still with a dreamy
effect. It became a pleasure to identify his progress with the quaint
rhythm of sound as he sauntered along. He discovered, as he neared
the light, that he was instinctively stepping over the seams in the
flagstone sidewalk as he had done as a boy. He smiled again at this.
There was something exceptionally juvenile and buoyant about his mood,
now that he examined it. He set it down as a reaction from that doctor's
extravagant and incendiary talk. One thing was certain--he would never
be caught up at that house beyond the race-course, with its reptiles and
its Chinaman. Should he ever even go to the pastorate again? He decided
not to quite definitely answer THAT in the negative, but a