ed. "I am sorry."

He collected himself.

"It is not you who have hurt me," he replied. "Reflections on the
contradictions and imperfections of life are always painful. And since
I have been here, I have seen a great deal of your father."

"You are fond of him!"

He hesitated. It was not an ordinary conversation they were dealing with
realities, and he had a sense that vital issues were at stake. He had,
in that moment, to make a revaluation of his sentiments for the
financier--to weigh the effect of her indictment.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "I am fond of him. He has shown me a side of
himself, perhaps, that other men have not seen,--and he is very lonely."

"You pity him." He started at her word. "I guessed that from an
expression that crossed your face when we were at the table. But surely
you must have observed the incongruity of his relationship with your
Church! Surely, in preaching as you did this morning against
materialism, individualism, absorption in the pursuit of wealth, you must
have had my father in mind as the supreme example! And yet he listened
to you as serenely as though he had never practised any of these things!

"Clergymen wonder why Christianity doesn't make more progress to-day;
well, what strikes the impartial observer who thinks about the subject at
all, as one reason, is the paralyzing inconsistency of an alliance
between those who preach the brotherhood of man and those who are opposed
to it. I've often wondered what clergymen would say about it, if they
were frank--only I never see any clergymen."

He was strongly agitated. He did not stop--strangely enough--to reflect
how far they had gone, to demand by what right she brought him to the
bar, challenged the consistency of his life. For she had struck, with a
ruthless precision, at the very core of his trouble, revealed it for what
it was.

"Yes," he said, "I can see how we may be accused of inconsistency, and
with much justice."

His refusal to excuse and vindicate himself impressed her as no attempt
at extenuation could have done. Perhaps, in that moment, her quick
instinct divined something of his case, something of the mental suffering
he strove to conceal. Contrition shone in her eyes.

"I ought not to have said that," she exclaimed gently. "It is so easy
for outsiders to criticize those who are sincere--and I am sure you are.
We cannot know all the perplexities. But when we look at the Church, we
are puzzled by that--whic