y could not be cut short enough to conform; on the
hands, which were strong and sinewy; on the wide, tolerant mouth, with
its rugged furrows, on the breadth and height of the forehead. She lay
for a moment, inert, considering.

"What you preach--yes," she answered, bravely meeting his look. "What
you are--no. You and your religion are as far apart as the poles. Oh,
this old argument, the belief that has been handed down to the man, the
authority with which he is clothed, and not the man himself! How can one
be a factor in life unless one represents something which is the fruit of
actual, personal experience? Your authority is for the weak, the timid,
the credulous,--for those who do not care to trust themselves, who run
for shelter from the storms of life to a 'papier-mache' fortress, made to
look like rock. In order to preach that logically you should be a white
ascetic, with a well-oiled manner, a downcast look lest you stumble in
your pride; lest by chance you might do something original that sprang
out of your own soul instead of being an imitation of the saints. And if
your congregation took your doctrine literally, I can see a whole army of
white, meek Christians. But you are not like that. Can't you see it for
yourself?" she exclaimed.

"Can't you feel that you are an individual, a personality, a force that
might be put to great uses? That will be because you are open-minded,
because there is room in you for growth and change?"

He strove with all his might to quell the inner conflagration which she
had fanned into leaping flames. Though he had listened before to doubt
and criticism, this woman, with her strange shifting moods of calm and
passion, with her bewildering faculty of changing from passive to active
resistance, her beauty (once manifest, never to be forgotten), her unique
individuality that now attracted, now repelled, seemed for the moment the
very incarnation of the forces opposed to him and his religion. Holder,
as he looked at her, had a flash of fierce resentment that now, of all
times, she should suddenly have flung herself across his path. For she
was to be reckoned with. Why did he not tell her she was an egoist? Why
didn't he speak out, defend his faith, denounce her views as prejudiced
and false?

"Have I made you angry?" he heard her say. "I am sorry."

It was the hint of reproach in her tone to which the man in him instantly
responded. And what he saw now was his portrait she had painte