“But you could never fully realise the truth,” he declared. “A sorrow has fallen upon me greater and more terrible than ever man has encountered; for at the instant of my recovery I knew that I was shut out from the grace of God, that all my work had been a mere mockery of the Master.”
“Why do you speak like this?” I argued, knowing him to be a devout man, and having seen with my own eyes how self-denying he was, and how untiring he had worked among the poor.
“I speak the truth, Clifton,” he said, a strange look in his eyes. “I shall never enter my church again.”
“Never enter your church!” I cried. “Are you really mad?”
“The wiles of Satan have encompassed me,” he responded hoarsely, in the tone of a man utterly broken.
“How? Explain!” I said.
“A woman’s eyes fascinated me. I fell beneath her spell, only to find that her heart was the blackest in all the world.”
“Well?”
“My love for her is an absorbing one. She is my idol, and I have cast aside my God for her.”
“Why do you talk like this?” I asked reproachfully. “Has it not been proved to you already that you can marry and yet live a godly life?”