It is said that every criminal sooner or later visits the scene of his crime. Some such spirit actuated Imrie. The day after his arrival in the city was Sunday, and late in the morning, at an hour when he knew that the congregation would be settling back in resignation preparatory to the sermon, he strolled up to St. Viateur's. But he did not enter. He preferred to stand across the street, and muse. It was not a beautiful building. Squat, massive, in places heavily ornate, in others dingily bare, it was a mere surface replica of pristine architecture, at best, a caricature. It was a pretence even if a candid one. It struck him with shocking force that its grim insincerity was symbolic. Within its counterfeit solidity, wood and tin masquerading as stone, machine-made carving strutting in fancied kinship to the inspired craftsmanship of mediæval ornament, dwelt a faith equally false, equally dead. Superficially it had not changed through the centuries: but the soul, the true life had gone from it. As the building was but the grinning skull of art, so the faith within its walls was but the dry and rattling bones of truth. Those days in the changeless solitude of the forest, where the God in the brown mists and the everlasting purple hills, was too near to be worshipped, where Pan was more divine than Jehovah, had expanded Imrie's soul more than he realised. A veil he knew then, had covered his eyes. He had seen truth with others' eyes. He had preached a truth which was his only by reflection. Now, for the first time in his life, he was exultantly conscious of seeing things with his own eyes. St. Viateur's, which had once been so inspiring, was now only pitiful. Even its successor, more vital as a work of art, would still house but a ghost of truth. He stared with a new wonder at the motor-cars, hurrying past, at a wireless telegraph station in the distance, thrusting its antennæ into the illimitable skies. How could he have ever been so blind! In all the world--and on it and over it--man was ever seeking truth and finding it. Always, like the wireless, he was pushing his antennæ into uncharted space, never resting content with the achievements of yesterday. It was only in the St. Viateur's that men still sat mumbling forgotten ritual, praying to shattered idols, rotting in the darkness. Outside, in the sunshine, the world forged ahead, living always in struggle, dying only in content. His had been death in life, thought Imrie with something between a thrill and a shudder. But there were years left to him yet. He threw back his shoulders and set his jaws as he turned homeward.