All sorts of people would come to Mr. Parchester’s services at times. Once it was said Mr. Balfour had come. Just to hear him. After his sermons, the strangest people would come and make confessions in the beautifully furnished reception-room beyond the vestry. All sorts of people. Once or twice he had asked people to come and listen to him; and one of them had been a very beautiful woman. And often he had dreamt of the people who might come: prominent people, influential people, remarkable people. But never before had it occurred to Mr. Parchester that, a little hidden from the rest of the congregation, behind the thin veil of this material world, there was another auditorium. And that God also, God also, watched his face.
And watched him through and through.
Terror seized upon Mr. Parchester.
He stood up, as though Divinity had come into the room before him. He was trembling. He felt smitten and about to be smitten.
He perceived that it was hopeless to try and hide what he had written, what he had thought, the unclean egotism he had become.
“I did not know,” he said at last.
The click of the door behind him warned him that he was not alone. He turned and saw Miss Skelton, his typist, for it was her time to come for his manuscript and copy it out in the specially legible type he used. For a moment he stared at her strangely.
She looked at him with those deep, adoring eyes of hers. “Am I too soon, sir?” she asked in her slow, unhappy voice, and seemed prepared for a noiseless departure.
He did not answer immediately. Then he said: “Miss Skelton, the Judgement of God is close at hand!”
And seeing she stood perplexed, he said—