And yet the explanation was profoundly simple. In the first place he had come away from his talk with Judith to study Scripture with new eyes. In words so familiar that he could quote them he had found new meaning. He had realised, with a shock, that always until then he had given a superficial acceptance to the interpretations of others, and in natural consequence he had set himself to the business of interpretation assisted by nothing but his own powers of logic and analysis. Once the new keystone was placed, the change in the entire arch was inevitable and immediate. He had only to secure a new postulate: the rest of the syllogism followed as a matter of course.
The second part of the explanation was simpler still. From the time that man emerged from his female origin, man has been doing things, both sublime and foolish, to win the regard of woman. In the little boy who jumps off a high place because a little girl "dared" him to jump, may be found the key to Imrie's puzzling transformation. Judith had dared him to be more man than clergyman. His eyes were fixed on her as he jumped.
There can be no doubt that he went further than he had intended when he entered the pulpit. But as speech clarifies thought, the very course of maintaining his new argument strengthened him in it, and his fears and hesitancies vanished. He left no doubt in other minds, as to his meaning, as he cleared away the doubts in his own.
Judith, listening in amazement with the rest, realised, as did few, how characteristic of him it all was. She felt that she could almost trace the steps which had brought him to this point. Her own attitude had played a large share, she felt certain. Her doubts had set up doubts in him. He had tried to dissipate them, and had failed. So far he was quite like other men. But then he had resolved to tell his congregation that he had failed. In that he was different. Other men would have waited longer, have hesitated and put off and pondered, some to the end of their lives. Not so with Imrie. A resolution once made was turned into action without delay, be the consequences what they might. The one outstanding distinction of his nature was his unfailing courage.
The whole procedure, involved and incomprehensible and distressing as she knew it must appear to most minds, was perfectly clear to her. She had put questions to him that he could not answer. So he had resolved to put them, without equivocation or delay, to his congregation. That to them these questions did not betoken honest doubt, but downright heresy, was no concern of his. They had to hear, and having heard, they had to decide what their significance was for him and for them, and for the relations between them. That he realised quite clearly that he was jeopardising his professional future, she did not for a moment doubt. But that realisation, she knew very well, would only confirm him the more strongly in his purpose.
Suddenly she realised that he was bringing his remarkable sermon to a close. His voice sank, becoming almost conversational, though it penetrated to the furthest corner of the church.
It was the closing plea of a lawyer before a jury of his peers. He had shown what he believed to be the fallacies in their relations to the Lord Jesus, and the fallacies in his own; he had shown the failure of the Church, which meant them as well as himself, to live up to its social significance; he had demonstrated with vivid brutality, the inconsistency between their professions of faith and their daily lives; he had humbled himself before his ideals and sought to make them do likewise; and now, very gently, he was asking for the verdict.
He paused for a moment before his last words, and swept the congregation with his eyes. They saw far more than was there to see. They saw his seminary days, when the world looked so simple and so enticing. They saw the early days of his charge of St. Viateur's, when the knowledge of actual achievement was not troubled by spiritual doubts. They saw the Sundays, innumerable, when his words, received by the great ones of the community with admiration and approval, had been followed by the little flatteries to which no human heart is immune. Then a lump rose in his throat, and his gaze came nearer. Something like tears came into his eyes as he surveyed these friends whom he was deliberately transforming into something perilously like enemies—for no reason save that he must. They would never understand—never. And yet he must go on—to the end if need be. That was his destiny.
Quietly he put his last question to them, "What are you going to do about it?" Then he closed his eyes for a moment, opened them to stare unseeing at judge and jury, sighed softly, and abruptly left the pulpit.
The answer was not long in coming. He knew that it would not be, and he dallied in the vestry, purposely. Judge Wolcott, kindly and genial, approached him with outstretched hand.