"Thank you, I am quite well now," she said with dignity.

The man settled back and the usher returned to his place and stood
watching her out of the corners of his eyes, fascinated by her
beauty.

The church was packed that night with more than two thousand people.
The air was hot and foul. The old brick building, jammed in the
middle of a block, faced the street with its big bare gable. The
ushers were so used to people fainting that they kept water and
smelling-salts handy in the anterooms. The Reverend Frank Gordon
no longer paused or noticed these interruptions. He had accepted
the truth that, while God builds the churches, the devil gets the
job to heat, light and ventilate them.

The preacher had not noticed this excitement under the gallery,
but had gone steadily on in an even monotone very unusual to his
fiery temperament.

A half-dozen reporters yawned and drummed on their fingers with their
pencils. The rumour of a brewing church trouble had been published,
but he had not referred to it in the morning, and evidently was
not going to do so to-night.

Toward the close of his sermon he recovered from the stupor with
which he had been struggling and ended with something of his usual
fervour.

He was a man of powerful physique, wide chest and broad shoulders,
a tall athlete, six feet four, of Viking mould, hair blond and