The perpendicular wrinkles came between the canon's eyebrows and he said: “My dear Mr. Storm, I have postponed as long as possible a most painful interview. The fact is, your recent sermon has given the greatest offence to the ladies of my congregation, and if such teaching were persisted in we should lose our best people. Now, I don't want to be angry with you, quite the contrary, but I wish to put it to you, as your spiritual head and adviser, that your idea of religion is by no means agreeable to the needs and necessities of the nineteenth century. There is no freedom in such a faith, and St. Paul says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' But the theory of your religion is not more unscriptural than its application is unwholesome. Yours is a gloomy faith, my dear Storm, and what did Luther say of a gloomy faith?--that the devil was very apt to be lurking behind it. As for himself he married, you may remember; he had children, he played chess, he loved to see young people dancing----” “I don't object to the dancing, sir,” said John Storm. “I only object to the tune.” “What do you mean?” said the canon, not without insolence, and the perpendicular wrinkles became large and heavy. “I mean, sir,” said John Storm, “that half the young people nowadays--the young women in the west of London especially--are asked to dance to the Dead March.” And then he spoke of the infamous case of Mercy Macrae, how she was being bought and sold, and how scandalous was the reputation of the man she was required to marry. “That was what I was coming down to speak about, sir--to ask you to save this innocent girl from such a mockery of holy wedlock. She is not a child, and the law can not help her, but you can do so, because the power of the Church is at your back. You have only to set your face against this infamy, and say----” “My dear Mr. Storm,” the canon was smiling condescendingly and swinging his glasses, “the business of the Church is to solemnize marriages, not to make them. But if the young lady comes to me I will say: 'My dear young lady, the conditions you complain of are more common than you suppose; put aside all foolish, romantic notions, make a nest for yourself as comfortably as you can, and come back in a year to thank me.'” John Storm was on his feet; the blood was mounting to his face and tingling in his fingers. “And so these men are to make their wives of the daughters of the poor first, and then ask the Church to solemnize their polygamy----” But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him. “My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and while silly young things----” But John Storm was out in the hall and putting on his hat to see Glory.