He closed the book.  The clock on the mantel struck three; his train was to leave at five.  He rose and went down into the silent church he had grown to love, seating himself in one of the carved stalls of the choir, his eye lingering in turn on each beautiful object:  on the glowing landscape in the window in memory of Eliza Parr, portraying the delectable country, with the bewildered yet enraptured faces of the pilgrims in the foreground; on the graceful, shining lectern, the aspiring arches, the carved marble altar behind the rail, and above it the painting of the Christ on the cross.

The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours.  ’Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ The hours when the mysterious sustaining and driving force is withdrawn, and a lassitude and despair comes over us like that of a deserted child:  the hours when we feel we have reached the limit of service, when our brief span of usefulness is done.  Had God brought him, John Hodder, to the height of the powers of his manhood only to abandon him, to cast him adrift on the face of the waters—­led him to this great parish, with all its opportunities, only that he might fail and flee?

He sat staring at the face of the Man on the cross.  Did he, in his overwrought state, imagine there an expression he had never before remarked, or had the unknown artist of the seventies actually risen above the mediocrity of the figure in his portrayal of the features of the Christ?  The rector started, and stared again.  There was no weakness in the face, no meekness, no suggestion of the conception of the sacrificed Lamb, no hint of a beatific vision of opening heavens—­and yet no accusation, no despair.  A knowing—­that were nearer—­a knowing of all things through the experiencing of all things, the suffering of all things.  For suffering without revelation were vain, indeed!  A perfected wisdom that blended inevitably with a transcendent love.  Love and wisdom were one, then?  To reach comprehension through conquering experience was to achieve the love that could exclaim, “they know not what they do!”

Human or divine?  Man or God?  Hodder found himself inwardly repeating the words, the controversy which had raged for nineteen hundred years, and not yet was stilled.  Perfection is divine.  Human!  Hodder repeated the word, as one groping on the threshold of a great discovery . . . .

III

He was listening—­he had for a long time been listening to a sound which had seemed only the natural accompaniment of the drama taking place in his soul, as though some inspired organist were expressing in exquisite music the undercurrent of his agony.  Only gradually did he become aware that it arose from the nave of the church, and, turning, his eyes fell upon the bowed head and shoulders of a woman kneeling in one of the pews.  She was sobbing.