ck and looked at it for a long time while
the music from the parlor flooded up to him. But he saw not a sketch.

He was back in a simpler age when the symbols of faith had power;
seeing with a new understanding a picture that had formed in his mind
as he worked out this creation--for him it was already created. . . .
A narrow crooked street, filled by a gay colorful throng that slackened
its pace and lowered its voice before a gray, weathered old church. A
beggar crouching on the steps, mouthing his whining song. A constant
stream of worshipers passing in and out through the great open door:
plumed cavaliers, their arrogant swagger for the nonce put off; gray
pilgrims, weary and dusty, with blistered feet and splintered staves;
mailed soldiers ready to march for the wars; tired-eyed crusaders home
from a futile quest; a haughty lady, a troubled daughter of artisans, a
faded wanton, brought into a brief gentle sisterhood by a common need;
all seeking the same thing. And perhaps in the doorway a faltering
sinner unconfessed, fear of punishment a flaming sword in his
path. . . . Ah, well! It was not so absurd, that picture. For those
seekers have even unto this day their children who, amid their
pleasuring and warring and questing, sometimes grow faint and would
rest.

In such company he entered. On the threshold they paused with a quick
breath for the chaste beauty of vista and line, the soft play of color
and shadow. Then sense of beauty faded before a thing that eye can not
see nor tongue express, what the seekers had needed and what they
found: peace, passing understanding, unseen but undoubted; hovering
above them in the noble nave, kneeling with them in shadowy aisle,
winging toward them on the shaft of sunshine streaming from heaven
itself upon the altar. Here, for intrigant and ravager, penitent and
saint, failure and world-weary, was sanctuary--respite, if only for an
hour, from sin and strife, passion and hate and self. It was good to
stay there a while, humbled yet uplifted, aspiring anew. For there was
a Presence in His own house.

A wonderful thing had happened to David Quentin. His sensitive
quivering heart had caught and recorded the great human need, and to
him it had been given to build a rest house for many weary and poor in
heart. Perhaps if his commonplace little trials had not seemed big and
tragic to him, he never could have known the need and so he never would
have written in stone a