“It’s true,” Mrs. Maxwell assented. “That girl’s Christian enthusiasm shames me every day. She headed the subscriptions at the Rectangle with twenty-five dollars. We pay her all we can afford, five dollars a week, and she dedicates one-tenth of her income to church work. And she believes in Jesus just as if he were a real person living today, as if she might possibly meet him around the corner any time.”

“And isn’t he living today?” murmured Mr. Maxwell.

“But where?” Rachel, Felicia, and Virginia looked at him in astonishment.

The bell rang and Mr. Maxwell got up as from a daydream and went to the door to admit Dr. West, Alexander Powers, and Stephen Clyde.

They spoke together. “Have you seen it?”

“The light?” Mr. Maxwell exclaimed, and his voice was echoed by the others.

“It has not been so beautiful nor so enveloping as it has this evening,” said Alexander Powers.

During the past fifteen years Powers had deep experiences. From that night when the sound of Rachel’s voice in the Rectangle had decided his course after the discovery of the Railway’s breaking of the law in the rebate cases, Alexander Powers had passed through a furnace of trials. Not for one moment had he turned back from following his Master, but his path had been rough and broken and his cross heavy. Yet the love light of the Redeemer shone steadily out of his great patient eyes.

“You all saw it?” asked Maxwell, his old excitement rising again.

“Yes, all of us.”

“It was astonishing.” Dr. West spoke in a subdued voice.

Stephen Clyde had walked over to Felicia. He and Felicia had had a blissful married life. They would always be lovers. Stephen stood now by her while Felicia proudly noted her husband’s handsome strength. Both had given themselves heart and soul to social service in the Master’s name.

“Stephen,” said Felicia gently, “what do you think of the light?”

”I don’t know. There was something about it tonight that made me strangely both glad and fearful. It filled me with the deepest longing and at the same time my heart beat with something like terror.”

“It had the same effect on me. Isn’t it strange?”

The bell rang again, and Mr. Maxwell welcomed into the room President Marsh and Mr. Norman. The moment they came into the room their faces revealed the same excitement.

Edward Norman could hardly speak. He panted as if he had been running. “Maxwell—this is a—most astounding thing—this—light. It is absolutely without parallel. How do—you—account for it? Marsh and I—tried to explain it as we came—along. It is not explainable.”

“Unless . . .” Mr. Maxwell’s face was deathly pale. His wife looked at him as she had all evening, with the same anxious, troubled look, wondering at the unusual exhibition of feeling on her husband’s part. “Norman it might be—do you regard it as entirely out of the range of human events that Jesus might live among men again?”

“Henry!” Mrs. Maxwell had come up to him as he stood in the middle of the room. The entire company was hushed into the most profound stillness. “Henry! What an impossibility! It is not—”