"I sent for you, Frank, because I discovered by accident, in the office of a newspaper of which I am a stockholder, that some curious things are going on between you and a young woman of your congregation. I put two and two together, and I've guessed the secret of your Temple. There's more behind all this than religious enthusiasm. That gift was not laid on God's altar, but on the altar of one of his little images here below. Out with it. You can't fool me." "Well, your guess is correct. She gave the money. I love her and she loves me. Ruth will go South for the winter, and we have separated. A divorce will be obtained in due time, and I will marry Miss Ransom under the new forms of Social Freedom, and you will be my best man." "Not on your life," Overman slowly growled, bringing his enormous jaws together and twisting the muscles of his mouth upward as though he smelled something. "Can't stand the rustle of a woman's dress?" "Oh, I might survive. You know they say the only really happy people at a wedding are the old bachelors." "Then why not?" "I draw the line at the progressive harem idea." "And a bachelor?" Gordon sneered. Overman nodded. "Many things may be forgiven sinners, but a bishop must be the husband of one wife." "I'm not a bishop. I'm a man. I ask no quarter of my enemies." "You have but one enemy. You can see him in the mirror any time." "It's funny to hear you preach!" The banker bent forward. "Frank, you're joking. You don't mean to tell me that your Socialist poppy plant has borne its opium fruit so soon? That you are going to desert that charming little woman, shy, timid and tremulous, with her great soulful eyes, the bride of your youth, the mother of your babes, and take up with another woman, just as any ordinary cur has done now and then for the past four thousand years?" Gordon winced. "No. I am going to form a union with this beautiful woman which shall be a prophecy and a propaganda of the freedom of the race, when comrade life shall forget the ancient fears, each shall be free to find and love his own, love be loosed from tragedy, doubt or moan, each life be its own, original and masterful, each man a god, arrayed and beautiful!" Overman laughed softly. "So fine as that? You're great on the frills. You have dressed it up nicely. But when two of your man-gods, arrayed and beautiful, get their eyes, set on the same woman-god, still more beautiful, arrayed or unarrayed, you'll hear the rattle of the police wagon in the streets of Heaven, with the ambulance close behind." The banker grinned and fixed his eye on his friend with a quizzical look. "Don't be a monkey," Gordon scowled. "Why not? You propose to go back to forest life." "I propose to make human society a vast brotherhood," the preacher cried, with a wave of his arm. "Well, don't forget that Cain killed his brother Abel for less than a woman's smile."