“It strikes me it is harder to guess than predestination,—what He would do if He were reincarnated,” replied Fenton gravely.
“It had not struck me so,” answered Bayard gently, “but there may be something in that.”
“Now,” continued Fenton, “take yourself. I fancy you believe—Do you suppose you are doing the kind of thing He would set about, if He were in your place?”
“How can I tell?” replied Bayard in a voice so low that it was scarcely articulate. “How can a man know? All I do know is, that I try. That is what—and that is all—I try to do. And I shall keep on trying, till I die.”
He spoke with a solemnity which admitted of no light response, even from a worldly man. Fenton was not that, and his eyes filled.
“Well,” he said, after a silence, “you are a good man, Emanuel Bayard. God go with you.”
“And with you,” replied Bayard, holding out his hand. “Our roads lie different ways. We shall not talk like this again.”
“You won’t mind that? You won’t feel it,” said Fenton uncomfortably, for he had risen to leave, and the conversation hung heavily on his heart, “if I don’t run across your way, often? It would hardly do, you see. My people—the church—the circumstances”—
He brought the poker down hard upon the cerebrum of the iron angel, who resented the insult by tumbling over on the funnel; thence, with a slam, to the floor. Fenton picked up the ornament with a red face, and restored it to its place. He felt, as a man sometimes does, more rebuked than irritated by the inanimate thing.
“Good-by,” said Bayard gently. It was all he said. He still held out his hand. His classmate wrung it, and passed, with bowed head, from his presence.