"Why, bless you, Sir, I don't want to be your guardian, and I don't intend to insinuate. I spoke to you once about a danger, and I was afraid you had forgotten it. Don't misunderstand me. I believe you are an honorable man, but honor is not always careful enough when it comes to talking to a lady, and none but an honorable man could make trouble on this occasion. The only trouble you can make--there (nodding toward the bench whereon the young woman sat, in fluffy white), the only trouble you can cause there," he repeated, "would be to make her still more dissatisfied with life. And a trouble might fall hard on you, Sir. Let me tell you something in confidence. People have said that my wedding to the church was what kept me from a marriage of the flesh. I let them believe so, but it is not true. Mr. Belford, a soul that is now cool and quiet in this black breast was once raging and on fire. It was a long time ago. I had just begun to preach. I lived at the house of a friend--over yonder." He waved his hand toward a distant hill on which was clustered a negro settlement. "And there was a woman with a face like cream when the cow has eaten the first buds of the clover; and her eyes were as bright as the star that hung above the manger, and her laugh was as sweet as the notes that dripped like honey from the harp of David." He stood erect, a pose of black dignity, his arms folded on his breast, and in one hand he held the weed that he had uprooted from among the flowers. I did not question the sincerity of his religious zeal; from what I had heard and from what I had seen of him I was persuaded that with honesty he had dedicated his life to the service of his creed, but now I felt that he was making a conscious picture of his sentiment and his sacrifice. The bigotry of applauded self-righteousness was in the look that he bent upon me, and my blood rose in resentment, but I said nothing; I let him proceed. "This woman was a wife, beyond my reach, and I felt that there was no danger for me, and therefore I was not careful, but the first thing I knew I was called upon to choose between the spirit of the Lord and the flesh of the devil." "Washington, you are talking what is popularly known as rot. How can you compare a handsome woman with the flesh of the devil?" "The devil's flesh may be beautiful, Sir; and beautiful flesh may not be conscious that it was laid on by the devil." "But if the devil can tint the flesh and make it beautiful, he is an artist." "Yes," he said, "and the devil might arm an agent with a paint brush." "More rot, Washington. The beautiful things are of the Lord and not of the devil. The devil may have made the weed you hold in your hand, but the flowers belong to God." With a shudder he dropped the weed, as if suddenly it had burnt him. "Well, the end of your love story; how did it come out?"