"'I asked my mother many a time why the Book aye opened there and what soiled and marked it so. She told me not for long, saying only that it was marked and soiled before her laddie had been born.
"'But the night before I sailed from Annan Foot, she put her arms about me and she told me of the anguish of her soul and all about the tear-stained place—for she told me of her own Gethsemane and of the bitter cup, and said that her laddie's lips could pass it by no more than hers.
"'And ever since that night ma ain buik aye opens at Gethsemane. Oh, Margaret, you understand, do you not?' he cried, 'I am not worthy of you and of your love.
"'The far-off strain of sin starting from another heart than mine (another than my mother's, by the living God) has stained my name. Mine is an unhallowed name. Mine is a shadowed birth. Mine is the perpetual Gethsemane and mine the unemptied cup!
"'Forgive me, Margaret, for the wrong I did you. I should never have spoken love to you at all, or if I did, I should have told you of the blight upon it; but the sky and the trees and the hill were clothed that night in the beauty that wrapt my soul and I thought that God had forgotten and had shrived me in the same sacred light. But He does not forget. That light itself cannot drive the shadow from Gethsemane and the cup has never since been absent from my lips.'
"Angus stopped—and God watched over me; for He pitied me.
"I thought of you and mother first, but God still kept my will in His. I wanted God to lead me and I asked Him to help me—and I waited.
"'Angus,' I said at last, 'your mother loved him, did she not?'
"'Loved!' he answered, 'her pure heart knew no other passion. My own is but an echo. Behold! I was shapen in love.'
"'Then,' said I, 'let her that is without love cast the first stone at her. If any sinning woman love, she has an advocate with the Father. Oh, Angus! Come to me!' I cried, for I was fainting."