you will note the verb
in the original--_is damned_, present tense.' Do you happen to remember
the verse?"

Ardea confessed ignorance, and he went on, with a lip-curl of contempt.

"Well, the whole chapter is about being careful for the weak brother.
The Romans used to eat the flesh of the animals offered in the
sacrifices to the gods, and some of the Christian Romans didn't seem to
be strong enough or sensible enough to eat it as just plain, every-day
meat. They tangled it up with the idol worship. So Paul, or whoever it
was that wrote the chapter, said: 'He that doubteth is damned if he eat,
because he eateth not of faith,' that is, the Christian faith, I
suppose, which would teach him that the meat wasn't any the worse for
having been offered to a block of wood or stone called a god. Now,
honestly, Ardea, what would you think of a teacher who would
deliberately cut a verse in two in the middle and make his half of it
mean something else, just to put a fellow down?"

"It doesn't seem quite honest," she could not help admitting.

"Honest! It's low-down trickery. And they all do it. Last year when I
was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a
Catholic priest. We got to talking, I don't remember just how, and I
said something about doubting the Pope's infallibility. Out pops the
same old text: 'My son, hear the words of the holy Apostle, Saint
Paul--" He that doubteth is damned!"' He was old enough to be my father,
but I couldn't help slapping the other half of the verse at him, and
saying that we'd most luckily escape because there wasn't any
dinner-stop for our train."

The flippant tone of all this disheartened Thomas Jefferson's listener,
and a silence succeeded which lasted until the train had stormed around
the nose of Lebanon and the whistle was blowing for Gordonia. Then Tom
said: "I didn't mean to hurt you; but now you see why I can't go back
and begin all over again." And she nodded assent.

There was no one at the station to meet the disgraced one, news of the
disaster at Beersheba being as yet only on the way. Thomas Jefferson was
rather glad of it; especially glad that there was no one from
Woodlawn--this was the name of the new home--to recognize him and ask
discomforting questions. But Ardea was expected, and the Dabney
carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform.

Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to
Scipio when she