Mrs. Slade motioned to a chair near her, which Lottie had placed, and the young man sat down.

Chapter II

Many things were puzzling in Fairbridge, that is, puzzling to a person with a logical turn of mind.  For instance, nobody could say that Fairbridge people were not religious.  It was a church going community, and five denominations were represented in it; nevertheless, the professional expounders of its doctrines were held in a sort of gentle derision, that is, unless the expounder happened to be young and eligible from a matrimonial point of view, when he gained a certain fleeting distinction.  Otherwise the clergy were regarded (in very much the same light as if employed by a railroad) as the conductors of a spiritual train of cars bound for the Promised Land.  They were admittedly engaged in a cause worthy of the highest respect and veneration.  The Cause commanded it, not they.  They had always lacked social prestige in Fairbridge, except, as before stated, in the cases of the matrimonially eligible.

Dominie von Rosen came under that head.  Consequently he was for the moment, fleeting as everybody considered it, in request.  But he did not respond readily to the social patronage of Fairbridge.  He was, seemingly, quite oblivious to its importance.  Karl von Rosen was bored to the verge of physical illness by Fairbridge functions.  Even a church affair found him wearily to the front.  Therefore his presence at the Zenith Club was unprecedented and confounding.  He had often been asked to attend its special meetings but had never accepted.  Now, however, here he was, caught neatly in the trap of his own carelessness.  Karl von Rosen should have reflected that the Zenith Club was one of the institutions of Fairbridge, and met upon a Friday, and that Mrs. George B. Slade’s house was an exceedingly likely rendezvous, but he was singularly absent-minded as to what was near, and very present minded as to what was afar.  That which should have been near was generally far to his mind, which was perpetually gathering the wool of rainbow sheep in distant pastures.

If there was anything in which Karl von Rosen did not take the slightest interest, it was women’s clubs in general and the Zenith Club in particular; and here he was, doomed by his own lack of thought to sit through an especially long session.  He had gone out for a walk.  To his mind it was a fine winter’s day.  The long, glittering lights of ice pleased him and whenever he was sure that he was unobserved he took a boyish run and long slide.  During his walk he had reached Mrs. Slade’s house, and since he worked in his pastoral calls whenever he could, by applying a sharp spur to his disinclination, it had occurred to him that he might make one, and return to his study in a virtuous frame of mind over a slight and unimportant, but bothersome duty performed.  If he had had his wits about him he might have seen