“Not that I heard. He talked as freely and openly as anyone could.”

“What was the one thing that impressed you most about him, Martha?”

“I think it was his great joy and his air of victory.”

Mr. Maxwell turned to Mr. Norman. “Edward, I’ll call up Grey and you question Martha about anything else you have in mind that I have forgotten.” He went over to the telephone, which was in the hallway, and called up the pastor of the Rectangle Church.

Mr. Norman did not try to ask Martha any more questions, for everyone was listening to the one-sided talk over the telephone.

“Yes. I’m glad to hear your voice, Grey. We have just been talking with Martha, our girl here, you know. . . . She . . . Of course, we can’t believe it. You say . . . What . . . You really believe it . . . Asleep? Now? At your house? . . . Can you come over? Norman is here, and Rachel and Virginia, and the regular company, and Stanton has come in. . . . In about half an hour? . . . All right. We can hardly wait to see you.”

Mr. Maxwell hung up the receiver and came back into the library. The grave seriousness of his face deepened. “Grey says he has no doubt whatever. I had hardly spoken his name before he said, ‘Jesus is here!’ Actually in his own house, asleep. Can we comprehend that?”

“Of course, when he was here before,” said Stanton, whom everyone was beginning to like for his fine combination of poet and man of action, “he slept in common people’s houses, and wore common clothes and ate common food and was a practical carpenter. Why should we expect anything different now if he has come again?”

“Do you accept it as fact that he has actually come again?” Mr. Maxwell framed the question as if he were afraid Stanton would say no.

“I would be as willing to take Martha’s evidence as quickly as anyone’s. Can anyone definitively say it is impossible for Jesus to live on earth again?”

“Not impossible, but improbable,” said Stephen Clyde.

“And why is it improbable? Has it not seemed to all of us in the last ten years as if the whole world was on the very eve of tremendous happenings in the church, and in the social, business, and political life of the people? Why, it has been almost like a spoken word of God every day. I do not find myself stunned at the thought of Jesus being here. Somehow it does not seem unnatural. It seems opportune. He is needed here now.”

“I have had the same feeling,” Mr. Maxwell said eagerly. “I have not been able to shut my mind to the vision of his possible coming. The need is so great. But the thought of his being here in actual person terrifies me. What will he say? What will he do? What judgment will he pass on the church and the ministry? Martha said he did not say a word of censure. It was all praise of the church. Didn’t you say so, Martha?”