"I love Macochee so," Marley said presently. "I just couldn't leave it!" "Don't! Don't!" she protested. "Don't even speak of it!" CHAPTER XIV ONE SUNDAY MORNING It was Sunday morning and Marley sat in church looking at a shaft of soft light that fell through one of the tall windows. From gazing at the shaft of light, he began to study the symbols in the different windows, the cross and crown, the lamb, the triangle that represented the Trinity, all the Roman symbols that Protestantism still retains in its decorations. Then he counted the pipes in the organ, back and forth, never certain that he had counted them correctly. All about him the people were going through the service, but it had lost all meaning for Marley, because he had been accustomed to it from childhood. Having been reassured by Lavinia, he felt that he should be happy, yet a strong sense of dissatisfaction, of uncertainty, flowed persistently under all his thoughts, belying his heart's assurance of its happiness. When Doctor Marley, advancing to the pulpit, buttoned his coat down before him, pushed aside the vase of flowers the ladies' committee always put in his way, and stood with his strong, expressive hand laid on the open Bible, Marley's thoughts fixed themselves for a moment in the pride and love he had always had for his father. There swept before him hundreds of scenes like this when his father had stood up to preach, and then suddenly he realized that his father had grown old: he was white-haired and in his rugged, smooth-shaven face deep lines were drawn--the lines of a beautiful character. He remembered something his father had said to the effect that the pulpit was the only place in which inexperienced youth was desired, showing the insincerity of what people call their religion, and then he remembered the ambitions he had dimly felt in his father in his earlier days; it had been predicted that his father would be a bishop. But he was not a bishop, and now in all probability never would be one; he was not politician enough for that. And Marley wondered whether or not his father could be said to have been successful; he had come to know and to do high things, he had lived a life full of noble sacrifice and the finest faith in humanity and in God; but was this success? He heard his father's voice: "The text will be found in the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah." But Marley never listened to sermons; now and then he caught a phrase, or a period, especially when his father raised his voice, but his thoughts were elsewhere, anywhere--not on the sermon. The men and women sitting in front of him kept shifting constantly, and he grew tired of slipping this way and that and craning his neck in order to see his father. And then the constant fluttering of fans hurt his eyes, and they wandered here and there, each person they lighted on suggesting some new train of thought.