Very well, what happens?  We who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and so on—­we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a general state of excitement; and while it’s going, don’t you see that that is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it, by which things are done?  Other denominations don’t need it.  We do, and that’s why we’ve got it.”

“But the mean dishonesty of it all!” Theron broke forth.  He moved about again, his bowed face drawn as with bodily suffering.  “The low-born tricks, the hypocrisies!  I feel as if I could never so much as look at these people here again without disgust.”

“Oh, now that’s where you make your mistake,” Sister Soulsby put in placidly.  “These people of yours are not a whit worse than other people.  They’ve got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest of us.  Take them by and large, they’re quite on a par with other folks the whole country through.”

“I don’t believe there’s another congregation in the Conference where—­where this sort of thing would have been needed, or, I might say, tolerated,” insisted Theron.

“Perhaps you’re right,” the other assented; “but that only shows that your people here are different from the others—­not that they’re worse.  You don’t seem to realize:  Octavius, so far as the Methodists are concerned, is twenty or thirty years behind the times.  Now that has its advantages and its disadvantages.  The church here is tough and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it.  It scours the rust and mildew off from their piety, and they go back singing and shouting.  But of course it’s had a different effect with you.  You’re razor-steel instead of scythe-steel, and the grinding’s been too rough and violent for you.  But you see what I mean.  These people here really take their primitive Methodism seriously.  To them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a genuine thing.  Well, don’t you see, when people just know that they’re saved, it doesn’t seem to them to matter so much what they do.  They feel that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted in the interest of people so supernaturally good as they are.  That’s pure human nature.  It’s always been like that.”

Theron paused in his walk to look absently at her.  “That thought,” he said, in a vague, slow way, “seems to be springing up in my path, whichever way I turn.  It oppresses me, and yet it fascinates me—­this idea that the dead men have known more than we know, done more than we do; that there is nothing new anywhere; that—­”

“Never mind the dead men,” interposed Sister Soulsby.  “Just you come and sit down here.  I hate to have you straddling about the room when I’m trying to talk to you.”

Theron obeyed, and as he sank into the low seat, Sister Soulsby drew up her chair, and put her hand on his shoulder.  Her gaze rested upon his with impressive steadiness.