"She is fair of face and hath a pleasant manner, and surely beauty and
a winsome way are from God; there seemed also a certain contempt of
baseness and a strength of will which are excellent. Perhaps my
judgment is not even because Miss Carnegie was gracious to me, and you
know, John, it is not in me to resist kindness, but this is how she
seems to me. Has there been trouble between you?"

"Do not misunderstand me, Rabbi; I have not spoken one word of love to
. . . Miss Carnegie, nor she to me; but I love her, and I thought that
perhaps she saw that I loved her. But now it looks as if . . . what I
hoped is never to be"; and Carmichael told how Kate had risen and left
the Church in hot wrath because he had compared Queen Mary to Jezebel.

"Is it not marvellous," mused the Rabbi, looking into the fire, "how
one woman, who was indeed at the time little more than a girl, did
carry men, many of them wise and clever, away as with a flood, and
still divideth scholars and even . . . friends?

"It was not fitting that Miss Carnegie should have left God's house in
heat of temper, and it seemeth to us that she hath a wrong reading of
history, but it is surely good that she hath her convictions, and
holdeth them fast like a brave maid.

"Is it not so, John, that friends, and doubtless also . . . lovers,
have been divided by conscience, and have been on opposite sides in the
great conflict, and doth not this show how much of conscience there is
among men?

"It may be this dispute will not divide you--being now, as it were,