“ This minister was taking him to higher and higher ground. He began to feel as if he had been led up to some transfiguring mountain peak of moral eminence.
"It is the highest appeal which could be made to the honor of another," he breathed in tones approaching awe.
"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul." ”

“ All nature had paused respectfully. A man, young, inexperienced, but potential, had cast the horoscope of life beyond the power of gods or men to intervene,—and with it had cast some other horoscopes as well.
Hampstead felt the spell his act of will had wrapped about them, but he felt also the substance of his resolution framing like granite in his soul and making him strong with a new kind of strength.
But soon the sun was descending again, the clouds were drifting once more, and a gust of wind nipped sharply, causing the skirts of John's overcoat to flap lustily. ”

“ Even the man's enemies must have pitied him had they seen him now. Searle, standing over him, would have felt a twinge of conscience. Elder Burbeck, before that spectacle, would at least have paused long enough to murmur, sincerely, with upturned eyes and a grave shake of the head, "God be merciful to him, a sinner." But neither Searle nor Burbeck, nor any other eye was there to see how he lay nor how long. Perhaps not even Tayna, crouching on the stairs outside, hearing his sobbings and venting tear for tear, could have computed the time. ”

“ As her lover spoke in this lofty, detached, meditative tone, Bessie held him off and studied him. This was the new John Hampstead speaking; the man she did not know; the man who, up to the hour when cruel scandal smirched it, had stirred this community with the example of his life. Before this new man she felt her very soul bowing. She had loved the old John. She adored the new.
"Oh, John! How brave! How strong! How right you are!" she exclaimed, with a note of adoration in her voice.
A pang of self-reproach shot through the big man. ”

“ Hampstead gazed at the woman doubtfully, speculating as to what argument would make the strongest appeal to her.
"His mother," he began gravely, "is my dearest friend. She is the most saintly woman I have ever known. One year of her life to this community is worth more than a score of years of mine—than all of mine. Let her know in private that her son is the thief, and she would grieve to death in a week. Let her know suddenly, with the force of public exposure, and it would kill her instantly, like an electric shock." ”

“ What does a minister do in such a case, he wondered, sweat breaking out on his brow.
"I think she wants to say something; bend low so you can hear her," suggested the mournful voice of the Gloom Woman. John bent over till he felt the patient's hectic breath upon his cheek, and shrank from it.
"The minister of God!" croaked the voice so faintly that the words barely traveled the necessary six inches to his ear.
No man ever felt less like the minister of God. Hampstead was hot, flustered, self-conscious, almost irritated.
But again he felt the hand like an undertow, tugging him down. ”

“ His very awkwardness, his temporary blindness, his dramatic ambition, the calamity which shattered that career and made him a seller of books, each had been a step into power. His passion for Marien even, while it was a fall, was a fall into knowledge, which taught him self-control and made his love for Bessie a tenderer and, as he fancied, a stauncher devotion than it could otherwise have been.
This gave him a feeling, half-superstitious and half-religious, that his existence was being ordered for him by a power above his own. The effect of this was to increase his eager zest for life itself. ”

“ And then he remembered another speech of hers: "If a man is sometimes man, may not woman be also sometimes woman?"
This helped him finally and completely, as he thought, to understand; but it left him with a still deeper sense of his own weakness and humiliation.
Marien Dounay had roused the woman want in him and while she was near, her personality had been strong enough to center that want upon herself. But when she shook his passion free of her, it turned, after circling like a homing pigeon, due upon its course to Bessie. John saw that this was all logical and psychological. ”