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.

His movement, he recalled afterward, did not come of a conscious
volition, as he rose and descended the chancel steps and walked toward
her; he stood for what seemed a long time on the white marble of the
aisle looking down on her, his heart wrung by the violence of her grief,
which at moments swept through her like a tempest. She seemed still
young, but poverty had marked her with unmistakable signs. The white,
blue-veined hands that clung to the railing of the pew were thin; and the