er rang more sonorous in his mind than when they echoed
in his ears above the whirring of the Bunsen burners. Science was his
passion, not theology; but science aroused in him a spirit of
reverential worship for his Creator as mere theology had never done. He
caught himself, one day, even, with his eyes glued fast to the
professor's deft manipulations, while he himself was saying, half
aloud,--

"The Lord is in His holy temple." And then, next in line, "When man
doeth that which is lawful, he shall save his soul alive."

Law everywhere! And then, quite as a corollary, life! But how dared he,
how dared any man, preach from a pulpit, when it was given to him to
toil in a laboratory, instead? Which was the greater reverence: to
exploit one's own belief; or, open-minded, to be searching for a
clearer outlook upon truth? And so, bit by bit, the lure of the
laboratory beckoned to Scott Brenton, just as, bit by bit, his wife and
his profession lost their hold upon him; lost it, to his regret, lost
it by their own failure to supply his highest needs. As to the
laboratory itself and all it offered, it was no mean achievement for it
to make good to Brenton all the other lacks, whether in his
professional career, or in his wife herself. Indeed, he turned to
science, his first great love, as some other men might have turned to
the wooing society of a stage soubrette. As the weeks went on, and the
tentacles of his priesthood, coming into contact with his doubts and
failing to penetrate them, by slow degrees relaxed their grip on him,
by those same slow degrees, he felt his manhood yielding to the
insistent demands of nature's law upon her votaries. As yet, however,
he had no realization that now the ultimate result was but a matter of
time. Professor Opdyke realized it, though, quite clearly; and he laid
his plans accordingly.

Meanwhile, between the insistent interests that centred in his son, and
the persistent efforts of the professor to make good all other lacks,
Scott Brenton was finding life a saner and a happier thing than he had
ever dreamed. Even his doubtings almost ceased to sting him, nowadays.
A Creator whose achievements ran throughout the gamut from the actions
of a bit of sodium flung into a dish of water, up to the intricate
brain processes of a baby just beginning, as the phrase is, to take
notice: surely a Creator capable of that was not likely to bungle His
plans and be driven to reconstruct them now and then,