Again the hearty cheers echoed on the still night air.
But Mrs. Carmichael raised a protesting hand. She didn't deserve such a compliment, she said.
Then the guests went their various ways. John Harding covered the embers of the fire and took from his teacher's hands whatever she had to carry, going directly to the Clayton home. She and Kenneth Hastings were the last to leave. Outside the door, they stood for a moment, watching the moonlit scene. In the distance, they heard a man's rich voice singing, "In the Cross of Christ I glory." They listened. Then they walked on in silence for some moments, the gaze of each fixed upon a colossal burning cross through whose yellow flames violet, and green, and red, and blue leaped and died away, then leaped again.
"The cross!" he said at last. "How it has gone in the van of civilization!"
She stopped and laid her hand on his arm. He, too, stopped and looked questioningly into her lifted face, which he could see but dimly.
"The world for Christ!" she said, deeply moved. "It will surely be! Followers of the wonderful Nazarene, filled and actuated by His spirit of brotherhood, are reaching the uttermost parts of the earth. We shall live to see the awakening of nations. We shall live to see strong men and women enlisted on the side of Christ to bring right and justice and purity into life, God into men's lives."
Again silence.
"I know nothing of God," he responded, "save as I see power manifested in the physical world. I have read the Bible so little. I am not intimately familiar with the life and words of Jesus. Before meeting you, I had always thought of religion with more or less contempt. I confess my ignorance. But I am learning to know you. What you are and what you do convince me there is something in your religion I have not found. I am as untaught in spiritual truth as a babe. But now I want to learn."
"I am glad you do. Will you study your Bible?"
He did not tell her he had no Bible, but he promised to study one.