Mingled with them, too, had been some other questions, questions akin to those lashing Scott Brenton's brain. However, in the case of Olive, they were incidental. With Brenton, they shook the foundations of his whole professional career. Indeed, it seemed to Brenton, looking down upon the still, straight figure of his friend, that it was little short of the incredible that Reed Opdyke, the hilarious, the irresponsible, could be the present cause and focus of a storm which was bidding fair to make a shipwreck of his life. If only Brenton had been aware how, long ago, Opdyke had been detailed to show him life as it was, and to teach him what an ass he easily might become, there would have been a certain fitness, to his mind, in the later situation. Once more Opdyke had been detailed to show him life as it really was, life and some other things, to point out to him, not what an ass he might, but what a hypocrite he had, become. Nowadays, it was that latter word which Brenton was using, as a spiritual flail, upon himself. Reed Opdyke's overthrow no longer filled the whole horizon of his doubtings. It was merely the starting-point whence he had embarked on a voyage long and perilous. At first, he only had felt a vague suspicion concerning the inherent justice and clemency of the manifestations of special Providence, a little wondering whether the God whom he had chosen to preach to all men was of necessity so much more merciful and fatherly in his dealing with the sons of men than was the irate God of all the line of Parson Wheelers. They would have laid down the law quite frankly that Reed Opdyke had been overtaken and cut down, in revenge for his more or less hereditary sins. He was holding forth to the effect that Reed had been smitten sorely, regretfully, in order that his spiritual betterment be effected with all due promptness, and with all due attention from his fellow men. To how much, after all, did the difference amount? Sunday after Sunday during those interminable eight months when Reed had lain still and gritted his teeth to keep himself from waxing too profane, he himself, Scott Brenton, robed in the stainless garb of his holy calling, had stood up before his people and stained his conscience by uttering platitudes to that effect. Then, sermon over and the service, he had gone away and lavished upon Reed Opdyke a purely human sympathy that was totally unlike the exalted pity of the priest. In other words, as concerned Reed Opdyke, Brenton's attitude was two-faced, human, priestly; two-faced, and the two faces were mutually antagonistic.