Her answer was a sudden burst of tears, "Don't--don't ask me," she sobbed.
"Is it true?"
His voice insistent, almost cold in its very insistence, would take no denial.
"Yes!" The assent could scarcely be heard for the sobs.
Morris Pugh gave a sigh. It was almost as if all that was human in him left his body with that long, laboured breath, for an instant afterwards he was the accuser, the judge.
"And you--Mervyn Pugh--God forgive you for bearing my father's honoured name--have done this wrong without repentance. You have stood by your child's grave and said never a word--never a word even to me, your spiritual guide, although I asked you, remember that! I asked you; and you have stood before the Lord all these long months, eating at His Table, drinking of His Blood, with this sin lying unconfessed in your heart! And you and the partner of your sin have stood together before the Great White Throne, your voices mingling in God's praise while your bodies----"
Mervyn started to his feet.
"Morris! Morris! before Heaven, that is not true--no! I am not so bad as that!"
Checked in the full flow of his superhuman blame, the minister paused, and something of the man came back to him.
"I will say nothing of myself," he went on, "of--of the shame. But have you any excuse? Can you show just cause why I should not deal with you, alas!--a thousand times alas!--my brother--as a minister of God must deal with the unrepentant sinner, with the hypocrite, with the man who has defiled the innermost sanctuary of God's temple?"