He stumbled on.
As he staggered across the threshold of the cottage he brushed through a mass of dried, sweet grass, cut down and left to wither in the pathway. Its snuff-like odor brought back the incense of the afternoon. With a strong revulsion of feeling, he threw off alike the sensuous charm of the odor and the horrid phantasmagoria that his imagination had conjured up.
He knocked at the door, feeling a self-disgust that amounted almost to physical nausea.
Philip Hardman after this was especially bitter in his sermons against Rome—her priests—her altars—her incense—her teachings. He regarded himself as having escaped, hardly by the skin of his teeth, from the clutches of the Scarlet Woman that sitteth upon the Seven Hills, and besought his hearers oft, with all his own peculiar eloquence, to keep themselves withdrawn from the temptations of Rome, of which, he avowed almost with tears, he had felt the power.
This experience has no bearing upon the story of Myron Holder, save inasmuch as it indicates the emotional instability of Philip Hardman. Poor Myron!
CHAPTER XXII.
"Behold, we know not anything!
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all;
And every winter change to spring."
"O Wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"
Mr. Fletcher arrived in Jamestown in due time and was met at the station by Mrs. Deans. Hardly had they started upon their drive to Mrs. Deans' before Mr. Fletcher inquired about Myron Holder. Mrs. Deans launched forth eloquently, and Mr. Fletcher was soon in possession of the same facts and fancies concerning Myron Holder as Philip Hardman had been deluged with; but the Reverend Fletcher viewed the recital differently. He regarded Mrs. Deans' indignation as being the natural feeling of a good woman toward a bad one, and saw in this drawing away of the skirts nothing derogatory to Mrs. Deans' womanhood.