"I do not preach it," Baird interposed. "There are things I dare to leave unsaid." "I have spoken falsely," Latimer went on, heavily. "I have lived a lie--a lie--but it was to save pure hearts from breaking. They would have broken beneath the weight of what I have borne for them. If I must bear punishment for that, I--Let me bear it." The rigid submission of generations of the Calvinistic conscience which presumed to ask no justice from its God and gave praise as for mercy shown for all things which were not damnation, and which against damnation's self dared not lift its voice in rebellion, had so far influenced the very building of his being that the revolt of reason in his brain filled him with gloomy terror. There was the appeal of despair on his face as he looked at Baird. "Your life, your temperament have given you a wider horizon than mine," he said. "I have never been in touch with human beings. I have only read religious books--stern, pitiless things. Since my boyhood I have lived in terror of the just God--the just God--who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I--Baird--" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have _hated_ Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word--and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, with hatred in my heart." "Good God!" Baird broke forth, involuntarily. The force of the man's desperate feeling, his horror of himself, his tragic truthfulness, were strange things to stand face to face with. He had never confronted such a thing before, and it shook him. Latimer's face relaxed into a singular, rather pathetic smile. "Good God!" he repeated; "we all say that--I say it myself. It seems the natural human cry. I wonder what it means? It surely means something--something." John Baird looked at him desperately. "You are a more exalted creature than I could ever be," he said. "I am a poor thing by comparison; but life struck the wrong note for you. It was too harsh. You have lived among the hideous cruelties of old doctrines until they have wrought evil in your brain." He stood up and threw out his arms with an involuntary gesture, as if he were flinging off chains. "Ah, they are not true! They are not true!" he exclaimed. "They belong to the dark ages. They are relics of the days when the upholders of one religion believed that they saved souls by the stake and the rack and thumbscrew. There were men and women who did believe it with rigid honesty. There were men and women who, believing in other forms, died in torture for their belief. There _is_ no God Who would ask such demoniac sacrifice. We have come to clearer days. Somewhere--somewhere there is light." "You were born with the temperament to see its far-off glimmer even in your darkest hour," Latimer said. "It is for such as you to point it out to such as I am. Show it to me--show it to me every moment if you can!" Baird put his hand on the man's shoulder again.