Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/455

 The calm sincerity of her manner poised the question like a lance aimed at his heart.

Hampstead hesitated. He really had not thought as far as this, any farther in fact than the hateful smudge of the thumb print and the picture in the Gallery of Rogues. But now, with her considerately calculating glances upon him, he did think that far, weighing all his hopes, his work, his position at the head of All People's, his priceless liberty, his fathomless love for Bessie, against the pledged word of a priest to a weak and penitent thief, whose soul at this moment trembled on the brink, suspended alone by the spectacle of the integrity of the confessor to his vow.

He weighed his duty to this thief now somewhat as five years before he had weighed his duty to Dick and Tayna against the supreme ambition of his life. The stakes then, on both sides, large as they had seemed, were infinitely smaller than the values at issue now. Looking back, John knew that then he had not only made the right decision, but the best decision for himself. He thought that he was humbling himself; but instead he had exalted himself.

But now the lines were not so sharply drawn. He was renouncing his very position and power to do his duty.

"Is it?"

Mrs. Burbeck half-looked and half-breathed this gentle reminder that she had asked her pastor a question.

"I believe," said the minister, revealing frankly the trend of his thought, "that the nearest duty is the greatest duty; that the man who spares himself for some great task will never come to a great task. I hold that a man ought to be true in any relation of life; and when the issue is drawn between one duty and another, he should try to determine calmly which is the highest