first time as he was--surely devoted and sincere, but narrow, limited, a
man lacking outward expression of inward and spiritual grace. He had
never had the gift to win hearts. That had not troubled him much,
earlier, but lately he had longed for a little appreciation, a little
human love, some sign that he had not worked always in vain. He
remembered the few times that people had stopped after service to praise
his sermons, and to-night he remembered not so much the glow at his
heart that the kind words had brought, as the fact that those times had
been very few. He did not preach good sermons; he faced that now,
unflinchingly. He was not broad minded; new thoughts were unattractive,
hard for him to assimilate; he had championed always theories that were
going out of fashion, and the half-consciousness of it put him ever on
the defensive; when most he wished to be gentle, there was something in
his manner which antagonized. As he looked back over his colorless,
conscientious past, it seemed to him that his life was a failure. The
souls he had reached, the work he had done with such infinite effort--it
might all have been done better and easily by another man. He would not
begrudge his strength and his years burned freely in the sacred fire, if
he might know that the flame had shone even faintly in dark places, that
the heat had warmed but a little the hearts of men. But--he smiled
grimly at the logs in front of him, in the small, cheap, black marble
fireplace--his influence was much like that, he thought, cold, dull,
ugly with uncertain smoke. He, who was not worthy, had dared to
consecrate himself to a high service, and it was his reasonable
punishment that his life had been useless.

Like a stab came back the thought of the junior warden, of the two more
empty pews, and then the thought, in irresistible self-pity, of how hard
he had tried, how well he had meant, how much he had given up, and he
felt his eyes filling with a man's painful, bitter tears. There had been