When he walked out of the same doorway an hour later, on his way to service, Fielding sat back in a shadowy corner and let him pass without a word.  He watched critically the broad shoulders and athletic figure as his friend moved down the narrow walk—­a body carefully trained to hold well and easily the trained mind within.  But the careless energy that was used to radiate from the great elastic muscles seemed lacking to-day, and the erect head drooped.  Fielding shook his own head as the Bishop turned the corner and went out of his view.

“‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’” he said aloud, and sighed.  “He has worked too hard this summer.  I never saw him like that.  If he should—­” and he stopped; then he rose, and looked at his watch and slowly followed the Bishop’s steps.

The little church of Saint Peter’s-by-the-Sea was filled even on this hot July afternoon, to hear the famous Bishop, and in the half-light that fell through painted windows and lay like a dim violet veil against the gray walls, the congregation with summer gowns and flowery hats, had a billowy effect as of a wave tipped everywhere with foam.  Fielding, sitting far back, saw only the white-robed Bishop, and hardly heard the words he said, through listening for the modulations of his voice.  He was anxious for the man who was dear to him, and the service and its minister were secondary to-day.  But gradually the calm, reverent, well-known tones reassured him, and he yielded to the pleasure of letting his thoughts be led, by the voice that stood to him for goodness, into the spirit of the words that are filled with the beauty of holiness.  At last it was time for the sermon, and the Bishop towered in the low stone pulpit and turned half away from them all as he raised one arm high with a quick, sweeping gesture.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!” he said, and was still.

A shaft of yellow light fell through a memorial window and struck a golden bar against the white lawn of his surplice, and Fielding, staring at him with eyes of almost passionate devotion, thought suddenly of Sir Galahad, and of that “long beam” down which had “slid the Holy Grail.”  Surely the flame of that old vigorous Christianity had never burned higher or steadier.  A marvellous life for this day, kept, like the flower of Knighthood, strong and beautiful and “unspotted from the world.”  Fielding sighed as he thought of his own life, full of good impulses, but crowded with mistakes, with worldliness, with lowered ideals, with yieldings to temptation.  Then, with a pang, he thought about Dick, about the crisis for him that the next week must bring, and he heard again the Bishop’s steady, uncompromising words as they talked on the piazza.  And on a wave of selfish feeling rushed back the old excuses.  “It is different.  It is easy for him to be good.  Dick is not his son.  He has never been tempted like other men.  He never hated Fairfax Preston—­he never loved Eleanor Gray.”  And back somewhere in the dark places of his consciousness began to work a dim thought of his friend’s puzzling words of that day:  “No one could help loving her—­she was so lovely—­so exquisite!”