On his way home to the club Saxton stopped at Bishop Delafield's rooms, and found the bishop, as usual, preparing for flight. Time did not change Bishop Delafield. He was one of those men who reach sixty, and never, apparently, pass it. He and Saxton were fast friends now. The bishop missed Warry out of his life: Warry was always so accessible and so cheering. John Saxton was not so accessible and he had not Warry's lightness, but the Bishop of Clarkson liked John Saxton! The bishop sat with his inevitable hand-baggage by his side and read Wheaton's letter through. "How ignorant we are!" he said, folding it. "I sometimes think that we who try to minister to the needs of the poor in spirit do not even know the rudiments of our trade. We are pretty helpless with men like Wheaton. They are apparently strong; they yield to no temptations, so far as any man knows; they are exemplary characters. I suppose that they are living little tragedies all the time. The moral coward is more to be pitied than the open criminal. You know where to find the criminal; but the moral coward is an unknown quantity. Life is a strange business, John, and the older I get the less I think I know of it." He sighed and handed back the letter. "But he's doing better than we might have expected him to," said Saxton. "A man's entitled to happiness if he can find it. He undoubtedly chose the easier part in running away. I can't imagine him coming back here to face the community after all that had happened." "I don't know that I can either. Preaching is easier than practising, and I'm not sure that I gave him the best advice at the ranch house that morning." "Well, it was the only thing to do," Saxton answered. "I suppose neither you nor I was sure he told the truth; it was a situation that was calculated to make one skeptical. It isn't clear from his letter that the whole thing has impressed him in any great way. He's anxious to have us think well of him--a kind of retrospective vanity." "But his punishment is great. It's not for us to pass on its adequacy. I must be going, John," and Saxton gathered up the battered cases and went out to the car with him. Bishop Delafield always brought Warry back vividly to John, and as they waited on the corner he remembered his first meeting with the bishop, in Warry's rooms at The Bachelors'. And that was very long ago! CHAPTER XLII AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS