nite slab as to
seek to impress on Kathryn's mind the vital nature of the questions
that were haunting him, taunting him, turning his life into a purgatory
of uncertainties whether his choice of profession had been aught but a
selfish wish for an easy and spectacular road to social eminence.

Just once, he thought he had impressed her.

Throughout this time, Brenton's sermons were prepared with a fury of
devotion to which, of old, they had been strangers. As the autumn waxed
and waned to winter, and the holy Advent season came to hand, he cast
his doubts aside and sought to bury them beneath the glorious gospel of
the Advent song: Peace to Men of Good Will. Indeed, there came one
Sunday morning when the message of good will downed all the other
voices, doubts, hopes, or fears, downed them beneath its brave promises
of inheritance for him who lives according to its simple law.

Brenton, afire with his message, self-forgetful, thrilling with the
greatness of his theme, felt his congregation taking fire beneath him.
For the hour, at least, there could be no question of his sincerity, of
his belief in the gospel he was preaching, a simple gospel of
generosity and love and of hard, ungrudging work for universal
betterment. Into his last sentences, careless of self, he flung the
outpourings of his very soul, and the quick sentences fell, one, and
one, and one, into the hush made out of many minds sharing a common
mood. Brenton felt it, and gave thanks. Here and now was his
vindication, here at last the proof that he had not chosen his calling
meanly, nor in all selfishness.

One after another, then, his congregation yielded to his sway. Last of
them all to yield was Kathryn, sitting in a front pew and, after her
custom, smiling up at him in an admiration which he had come to find
galling in its emptiness of any meaning. But, at the last passionately
fervent words, her blank smile faded and, for the first time in all his
preaching, her face became overcast, intent. His sermon ended, Brenton
bowed his head in a benediction which, in his heart, he sent most
earnestly upon his wife. Perchance the selfsame hour that saw his
self-vindication should also see the rending of the veil of
non-comprehension which had fallen down between the two of them.

The luncheon hour, however, brought with it disillusion. Over the
luncheon, Kathryn spoke.

"Scott," she asked her husband; "did you see me frowning at you, this
morning, just as