He had expected a vehement rebuke; but the old missionary only smiled on him sadly. “It was noble of you, Willard.... I understand....” He looked at the young man’s coat. “We had the same thought—again—at the same hour.” He paused, and drew Willard into the empty passage of a ruined building behind the fountain. “But what’s the use,—what’s the use?” he exclaimed.
The blood rushed to the young man’s forehead. “Ah—then you feel it too?”
Mr. Blandhorn continued, grasping his arm: “I’ve been out—in this dress—ever since you left; I’ve hung about the doors of the Medersas, I’ve walked up to the very threshold of the Mosque, I’ve leaned against the wall of Sidi Oman’s shrine; once the police warned me, and I pretended to go away ... but I came back ... I pushed up closer ... I stood in the doorway of the Mosque, and they saw me ... the people inside saw me ... and no one touched me ... I’m too harmless ... they don’t believe in me!”
He broke off, and under his struggling eyebrows Willard saw the tears on his old lids.
The young man gathered courage. “But don’t you see, sir, that that’s the reason it’s no use? We don’t understand them any more than they do us; they know it, and all our witnessing for Christ will make no difference.”
Mr. Blandhorn looked at him sternly. “Young man, no Christian has the right to say that.”
Willard ignored the rebuke. “Come home, sir, come home ... it’s no use....”
“It was because I foresaw you would take this view that I sent you to Mogador. Since I was right,” exclaimed Mr. Blandhorn, facing round on him fiercely, “how is it you have disobeyed me and come back?”
Willard was looking at him with new eyes. All his majesty seemed to have fallen from him with his Arab draperies. How short and heavy and weak he looked in his scant European clothes! The coat, tightly strained across the stomach, hung above it in loose wrinkles, and the ill-fitting trousers revealed their wearer’s impressive legs as slightly bowed at the knees. This diminution in his physical prestige was strangely moving to his disciple. What was there left, with that gone—?
“Oh, do come home, sir,” the young man groaned. “Of course they don’t care what we do—of course—”