of shame, and that they have respected purity in the midst of their foulness.  ’Such things must be,’ they say:  ‘let us alone, lest a worse thing ensue.’  When they are filled full with sin, they cry ’Lo! our appetite has gone from us and we are clean.’  They are willing to slake lust with satiety, but not to combat it with prayer.  They tread one woman into the mire, and excuse themselves because the garment of her sister is spotless.  How vain is this lying homage to virtue!  How can Satan cast out Satan?

“Oh, my brethren, this hypocrisy is the curse and danger of our age.  The Atheist, no longer an execration, an astonishment, a curse, and a reproach, poses now as the friend of man and the champion of right.  Those who incur the last and most terrible curse in this book, do so in the name of that truth for which they profess to be seeking.  Art, profanely veiling its voluptuous nakedness with the attributes of religion, disguises folly so subtly that it seems like virtue in the slothful eyes of those who neglect continually to watch and pray.  The vain woman puts on her ornaments to do honor to her Creator’s handiwork:  the lustful man casts away his soul that society may be kept clean:  there is not left in these latter days a sin that does not pretend to work the world’s salvation, nor a man who flatters not himself that the sin of one may be the purging of many.  To such I say, Look to your own soul:  of no other shall any account be demanded of you.  A day shall come in which a fire shall be kindled among your gods.  The Lord shall array Himself with this land as a shepherd putteth on his garment.  Be sure that then if ye shall say ’I am a devil; but I have cast out many devils,’ He will reply unto you, How can Satan cast out Satan?  Who shall prompt you to an answer to that question?  Nay, though in His boundless mercy He give you a thousand years to search, and spread before you all the books of science and sociology in which you were wont to find excuses for sin, what will it avail you?  Will a scoff, or a quibble over a doubtful passage, serve your turn?  No.  You cannot scoff whilst your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth for fear, and there will be no passage doubtful in all the Scriptures on that day; for the light of the Lord’s countenance will be over all things.”

BOOK III

CHAPTER XII

One Sunday afternoon, as the sun was making rainbows in the cloud of spray thrown from the fountain in Kew Gardens, Sholto Douglas appeared there amongst the promenaders on the banks of the pond.  He halted on the steps leading down to the basin, gazing idly at the waterfowl paddling at his feet.  A lady in a becoming grey dress came to the top of the steps, and looked curiously at him.  Somehow aware of this, he turned indifferently, as if to leave, and found that the lady was Marian.  Her ripened beauty,