One morning in early June, just a year after the memorable Hyde Park meeting, Charles Osmond happened to be returning from the death bed of one of his parishioners when, at the corner of Guilford Square, he met Erica. It might have been in part the contrast with the sad and painful scene he had just quitted, but he thought she had never before looked so beautiful. Her face seemed to have taken to itself the freshness and the glow of the summer morning.
“You are early abroad,” he said, feeling older and grayer and more tired than ever as he paused to speak to her.
“I am off to the museum to read,” she said, “I like to get there by nine, then you don't have to wait such an age for your books; I can't bear waiting.”
“What are you at work upon now?”
“Oh, today for the last time I am going to hunt up particulars about Livingstone. Hazeldine was very anxious that a series of papers on his life should be written for our people. What a grand fellow he was!”
“I heard a characteristic anecdote of him the other day,” said Charles Osmond. “He was walking beside one of the African lakes which he had discovered, when suddenly there dawned on him a new meaning to long familiar words: 'The blood of Christ,' he exclaimed. 'That must be Charity! The blood of Christ that must be Charity!' A beautiful thought, too seldom practically taught.”
Erica looked grave.
“Characteristic, certainly, of his broad-heartedness, but I don't think that anecdote will do for the readers of the 'Idol-Breaker.'” Then, looking up at Charles Osmond, she added in a rather lower tone: “Do you know, I had no idea when I began what a difficult task I had got. I thought in such an active life as that there would be little difficulty in keeping the religious part away from the secular, but it is wonderful how Livingstone contrives to mix them up.”
“You see, if Christianity be true, it must, as you say, 'mix up' with everything. There should be no rigid distinction between secular and religious,” said Charles Osmond.
“If it is true,” said Erica, suddenly, and with seeming irrelevance, “then sooner or later we must learn it to be so. Truth MUST win in the end. But it is worse to wait for perfect certainty than for books at the museum,” she added, laughing. “It is five minutes to nine I shall be late.”