Dr. Morton Sims was a bachelor. He was more. He was a man with a virgin mind. Devoted always to the line of work he had undertaken he had allowed nothing else to disturb his life. For him passion was explained by pathological and physiological occurrences. That is to say, passion in others. For himself, he had allowed nothing that was sensual to interfere with his progress, or to influence the wise order of his days.
Therefore, he reverenced women.
Hidden in his mind was that latent adoration that the Catholic feels about the Real Presence upon an altar.
A good Knight of Science, he was as pure and pellucid in thought upon these matters as any Knight who bore the descending Dove upon his shield and flung into the mêlée calling upon the name of the Paraclete.
In his own fashion, and with his own vision of what it was, Morton Sims, also, was one of those seeking the Holy Grail.
He adored his sister, a sweet woman made for love and motherhood but who had chosen the virgin life of renunciation that she might help the world.
Women! Yes, it was women who suffered. There were tears in his mind as he thought of Women. Before a good woman he always wished to kneel.
How heavy the night was!
He identified it with the sorrowful weight and pressure of the Fiend Alcohol upon the world. And there was a woman, here near him, a woman with a sweet and fragrant nature—so the old clergyman had said.
On her, too, the weight must be lying. For Mary Lothian there must be horror in the days. . . .