recalled, with satisfaction, the honours he had won in Biblical
knowledge and in history, and the more easily gained rewards for
rhetoric. It was only natural that he should have been immediately
successful as a preacher. How often he had moved his flock to tears! No
wonder he had got on.
Those first successes, and the pleasures which they brought with them of
gratified vanity, had resulted in turning him from a Christian into an
orator. He understood this dimly, but he thrust back the unwelcome truth
with the reflection that his triumphs in the pulpit dated from the time
when he began consciously to treat preaching as an art. After all, was
he not there to win souls to Christ, and had not Christ himself praised
the wisdom of the serpent? Then came the change from obscurity and
narrow living in the country to Kansas City and luxury. He had been wise
in avoiding that girl at Pleasant Hill. He smiled complacently as he
thought of her dress, manners, and speech. Yet she was pretty, very
pretty, and she had loved him with the exclusiveness of womanhood, but
still he had done right. He congratulated himself upon his intuitive
knowledge that there were finer girls in the world to be won. He had not
fettered himself foolishly through pity or weakness.
During his ten years of life as a student and minister he had been
chaste. He had not once fallen into flagrant sin. His fervour of
unquestioning faith had saved him at the outset, and, later, habit and
prudence. He lingered over his first meeting with Mrs. Hooper. He had
not thought much of her then, he remembered, although she had appeared
to him to be pretty and perfectly dressed. She had come before him as an
embodiment of delicacy and refinement, and her charm had increased, as
he began, in spite of himself, to notice her peculiar seductiveness.
Recollecting how insensibly the fascination which she exercised over him
had grown, and the sudden madness of desire that had forced him to
declare his passion, he moaned with vexation. If only she had not been
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