“Why, Bent, you’ve scarcely attended church half a dozen times since you came home from college. What brings you out to-morrow?”
“You!” he answered, feeling himself thrill and choke a bit. “I’m a heathen, I admit; but I’m coming out to-morrow to worship—you.” He had said such things before, to other girls, but he had spoken them lightly, and without a tremor; now little electric vibrations were running along his nerves, and, though he knew that his face was pale, he could feel his swollen heart pulsing hard, and his temples drumming. He had never dreamed that saying such a “little thing” to a pretty girl would come so near unmanning him.
Her surprise had grown, but she was self-possessed. “Thou shalt not worship false gods,” she laughed. Then, as if she saw something in his eyes which made her fear he would go further, she hastily gave her consent: “If you come out to church to-morrow I’ll permit you to walk home with me—after Sabbath School. That’ll be your reward for listening to father’s sermon. Now, for the first time in my life, I feel that I have really done something for the heathen.”
Laughing, she ran up the steps of the trellised porch, turning a moment to say good night, framed in an arch of June green vines. Head bared, he gazed at that picture, and found it the fairest his eyes had ever looked upon. There was now in his mind no question, no doubt; he knew.
“Good night, Janet,” he said softly. “Until to-morrow, and that will be—a year.” He had laughed at silly, lovesick chaps who said things like that; but now, before he knew what he was saying, he had uttered it with all the sincerity of his soul.
CHAPTER XVII
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
The door of the Reverend John Harting’s study was open. In the softened afternoon light which came from the window above his desk, he sat, giving his morrow’s sermon the last polishing touches. But when Janet would have slipped past, he heard her light footstep, and called to her. She stopped at the door.
“Come in, my dear,” he said, lifting his spectacles to his forehead, and turning from the outspread pages of manuscript. “Would you mind sitting down a moment? I have something I wish to say to you.”
He spoke precisely and formally, and even in ordinary conversation he had a touch of that singsong intonation which all old-time ministers affected. A fringe of white locks, carefully combed, added to the somewhat stern, but almost patriarchal, expression of his angular, deeply lined face. It was the fearless face of a good-hearted man, and yet there was something about it indicative of narrowness and bigotry. Such a face, one fancied, might have belonged to a leader of martyrs.