"The events of to-night must have been graven deeply into all our hearts. None of us can ever be quite the same. Each must start afresh, with our lives enriched by the lesson and by the experiences of this hour.
"It has brought to me the keenest suffering, the bitterest disappointment, that I have ever known. It has brought to me also a deepening faith in the marvelous power of God to overrule the most untoward incidents to His glory. It has brought to me also the greatest gift that any man can have upon the side of his earthly relations,—a joy so great, so supreme, so ineffable that I cannot speak farther than to say to you that it is mine to-night; and that you look into my eyes at the happiest moment I have ever known."
There was a movement in the gallery. A tall woman, heavily veiled, with an air of unmistakable distinction about her, arose and mounted the aisle step by step to the stairway leading downward.
Desiring with all the violent impetuosity of her nature to break out with the truth that would vindicate the man she loved so hopelessly and had involved so terribly, Marien had nevertheless been true to her vow of silence. But she had brought Rollie Burbeck to this meeting, and she had kept him there. At the critical moment she had sent him down to stand beside his mother, until the young man's clay-like soul at last had fluxed and fused into the moulding of a man. Having seen the mischief she had wrought undone, so far as anything done ever is undone, she was leaving now, when the minister had begun to speak of what she could not bear to hear.
Hampstead's gaze watched the receding figure, and a poignant regret for her smote in upon him in the midst of all his joy.
Desperately, with that enormous resolution of which she was capable, Marien Dounay was stepping undemonstratively out of his life. But as she went, he knew that the verdict pronounced upon him by the court was one now pronounced upon her. All through life she would be held to answer for the love she had slain for the sake of her ambition.
Of those who followed the eye of the minister as it marked the departure of the woman from the gallery, some, of course, recognized her, and for a moment they may have been puzzled over the mystery of the part she had played in that moving drama, the last act of which was now drawing to its end before them; but the minister was speaking again:
"It seems to me best for us all," he was saying, "to disperse quietly, to go each to his or her own home, to our own families, into the deeper recesses of our own hearts, to ponder that through which we have passed and plan for each the future duty.
"Upon one point I am inclined to break into homily. The great lesson which I myself have learned can be best expressed in the verdict of the court at my preliminary hearing: 'Held to Answer.' It seems to me there is a great philosophy of life in that. In the crowding events of the week past, I have been 'Held to Answer' for many mistakes of mine. Some of you must find yourselves held to answer now for the manner in which you have borne yourselves. Our young brother, Rollie Burbeck, for whom we feel so deeply and whose courage to-night we have so greatly admired, will be held to answer to-morrow before his associates and the world for his past mistakes and for his proposals for the future. But we shall be held to answer also for our blessings and our opportunities. A great joy has come to me. The woman I have loved devotedly, but perhaps undeservingly, for years, has come thundering half way across the continent to stand beside me here to-night. She brings me great happiness, an increasing opportunity to do good. For that also I shall be held to answer, since joys are not given to us for selfish use, but that we may enlarge and give them back again.
"And now, though I am no longer your pastor, you will permit me, I am sure, to lift my hand above you for this last time and invoke the benediction of God which is eternal upon the life of every man and woman here to-night."