They were not lovers, these two; hardly friends, at least in the name of the thing; she was not an accessible girl, and he was a preoccupied man. A certain comfortable acquaintance, such as grows without drama in the quiet society of university towns, had brought them together, as chance led, without distinct volition on the part of either. He would graduate in three days. He had called to say good-by to the Professor’s family, and had taken Miss Helen out to see the shadows on the cross where the paths met--the mild and accepted form of dissipation in Cesarea; for Professors’ daughters. They walked without agitation, and talked without sentiment. Truth to tell, their talk was serious, above their years, and beyond their relation. The fact was that Emanuel Bayard had that spring with difficulty received his license to preach. There was a flaw in his theology. The circumstance was momentous to him. His uncle, for one thing, had been profoundly displeased; had rebuked, remonstrated, and commanded; had indeed gone so far as to offend his nephew with threats of a nature which the young man did not divulge to Miss Carruth, for his natural reserve was deep. She had noticed that he did not confide in her as readily as the other students she had known. But he had told her enough. The Professor’s daughter, too well used to the ecclesiastical machinery and ferment of the day, was as familiar with its phases and phrases as other girls are with the steps of a cotillion or the matrimonial chances of a watering-place. She knew quite well the tremendous importance of what had happened. “I understand,” she said in her deep, rich, almost boyish voice, “I understand it all perfectly. You wouldn’t say you did, when you didn’t.” “How _could_ I?” interrupted Bayard. “You couldn’t, and so they stirred up that fuss. You were more honest than the other fellows. And you were punished for it.” “You are good to put it in that way, but what right have I to take it in that way?” urged Bayard wistfully. “The other fellows are just as good men as I; better, most of them. Fenton passed all right, and the rest. I don’t feel inclined to parade my ecclesiastical honesty and set myself above them,--in my own mind, I mean. I have dropped below them in everybody else’s; of course I know that.”