"A man must serve as he reads his command," her companion reminded her. "He has done his work as he conceived it."
"And yet—" she looked into his face with a deep questioning which held no note of accusation—"if anything that you said to-day is true, his whole effort was not only wasted but perverted, and it was true. It was so terribly true that it killed him!"
"What do you mean?" Haymond's gaze searched her eyes with incredulous amazement. It seemed to be making an effort to steady her against the wild utterances of hysteria, but her response was convincingly calm.
"I mean just that. I myself had nothing in common with his views. To me they seemed narrow—pitifully narrow and uncomprehending—and he was my father. We were warned that in any sudden gust of anger his feeble life spark—would go out, so I put my own conceptions of what counted behind me and tried to shield him." Sam Haymond hardly heard the last words. He could realize only the dazing and crushing import of his own unwilling instrumentality. At last he inquired slowly, "You mean that my sermon—that the things I said—" There he broke off and the distress in his eyes was so poignantly genuine that Conscience replied softly, "No, it wasn't you. It was Fate, I guess. Even I can't blame you. It only proves that the thing I warped my own life to prevent was inevitable—that's all."
For a little while the minister stood silent and across his face passed a succession of bewildered shadows.
"It is hard for me to grasp this," he said at last with a grief-laden voice. "It is hard for me to realize that two men serving the same God; both preaching His Word with identical earnestness could be so at variance that the concept of one should give mortal hurt to the other."
They sat in silence until the sunset pageantry had dimmed to twilight. Then the man spoke again, guardedly.
"You said something about warping your life for your father's sake. I wonder if—well, I wonder if there's anything it would help you to talk about—not to the minister but to the friend."
She met his gaze with one of equal directness, and he could see an impulse, rather hungry and eager, dawn only to be repressed in her eyes. At last she shook her head. "No," she answered. "But it's good of you to ask me. No, there's nothing that talking about will mend."