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!"

The congregation rustled softly everywhere as the people settled
themselves to listen--they listened always to him. And across the hush
that followed came the Bishop's voice again, tranquilly breaking, not
jarring, the silence. "Not disobedient to the heavenly vision," were the
words he was saying, and Fielding dropped at once the thread of his own
thought to listen.

He spoke quickly, clearly, in short Anglo-Saxon words--the words that
carry their message straightest to hearts red with Saxon blood--of the
complex nature of every man--how the angel and the demon live in each
and vary through all the shades of good and bad. How yet in each there
is always the possibility of a highest and best that can be true for
that personality only--a dream to be realized of the lovely life,
blooming into its own flower of beauty, that God means each life to be.
In his own rushing words he clothed the simple thought of the charge
that each one has to keep his angel strong, the white wings free for
higher flights that come with growth.