have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to
be called thy son_."

Ages stretched their human wastes between these words of the New
Testament and those other words of the Old; but the parable of
Christ really finished the prayer of David: in each there was the
same young prodigal--the ever-falling youth of humanity.

Another moment and the whole congregation knelt and began the
confession. Isabel also from long custom sank upon her knees and
started to repeat the words, "We have erred and strayed from thy
ways like lost sheep." Then she stopped. She declined to make
that confession with Rowan or to join in any service that he shared
and appropriated.

The Commandments now remained and for the first time she shrank
from them as being so awful and so near. All our lives we placidly
say over to ourselves that man is mortal; but not until death
knocks at the threshold and enters do we realize the terrors of our
mortality. All our lives we repeat with dull indifference that man
is erring; but only when the soul most loved and trusted has gone
astray, do we begin to realize the tragedy of human imperfection.
So Isabel had been used to go through the service, with bowed head
murmuring at each response, "_Lord have mercy upon us and incline
our hearts to keep this law_."

But the laws themselves had been no more to her than pious archaic
statements, as far removed as the cherubim, the candlesticks and
the cedar of Solomon's temple. If her thoughts had been forced to
the subject, she would have perhaps admitted the necessity of these