When Gordon announced at the evening service that a million dollars had been subscribed to the new “Temple of Man,” and that he had been constituted its sole trustee, the crowd burst into a storm of applause.

In vain he raised his big muscular hand over the tumult.

Troops of young men and women with flushed faces, some laughing, some crying, sprang from their seats, rushed to the platform and seized his hand.

The strains of the national hymn suddenly burst from the crowd, and they rose en masse singing it with triumphant peal. As its last note died away a woman’s voice started “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the people caught it instantly and its mighty chorus rolled heavenward. The singing had in it the spontaneous rhythm of hearts transported by resistless feeling. For half an hour they stood and sang the old familiar hymns whose sentences were wet with the tears and winged with the hopes and mysteries of their lives.

Instead of a sermon, Gordon read his resignation as pastor of the Pilgrim Church.

And then, folding his hands behind him, in trumpet tones he cried:

“Next Sunday morning will be the last service I will ever conduct in this church; the Sunday morning following, at eleven o’clock, the first services of the ‘Church of the Son of Man’ will be held in the old Grand Opera House. It will seat four thousand people. All who wish to join this independent society are cordially invited to be present and bring your friends. The work of building the ‘Temple of Man’ will begin at once. Within six months we hope to lay its corner-stone.”

The meeting was closed at once with the Doxology and Benediction.

The reporters crowded around him for fuller details. He refused to give any further information. They interviewed every officer of the church and congregation from whom any news might be secured, and it was nine o’clock before the excitement had subsided and the crowd left.

The organist and quartet choir lingered to rehearse their music for the following Sunday.

Gordon retired to his study, where he had asked Kate to meet him for an important conference.

The church opened on the cross street and stretched its barn shape through the entire block. The study was beside the pulpit platform, a little beyond the centre of the building. Behind it was the Sunday-school and reading-room, opening on the rear.

Kate had the keys to the reading-room, which was under her direction, and Gordon asked her to come to his study from the rear entrance through the Sunday-school room that she might avoid the suspicion of the reporters. For the same reason he did not wish to be seen at her house. He had left the door of his study unlocked for her, and she entered before the crowd had left the church.

Within a few moments from the time she unlocked the door of the reading-room, Van Meter’s detectives informed him that she was in the pastor’s study and that he had left the rear door open for her to secretly enter.

The Deacon despatched one of his men with an anonymous note to Ruth informing her that Gordon was in his study alone by secret appointment with Kate Ransom, and giving to her duplicate keys to every door in the church building.

The detective did not see Ruth, but the maid said she was at home, and he handed her the package.

Gordon had telephoned to her briefly the facts of the excitement of the morning, and told her he was so exhausted that he would not return for dinner, but would take his meals at a hotel and come home after the evening service.

When Ruth received the note and keys she was brooding over his absence and peering in the depths of the widening gulf which separated them in such a crisis of his life.

The note threw her into the wildest excitement. All the old fiery temper and jealousy which she had kept smouldering in restraint now burst its bounds.

Flushed and trembling she rushed from the house and soon reached the church.

She opened the door gently, and with soft feline step was about to enter the Sunday-school room to reach his study, when through the glass sliding partition she heard the voice of Van Meter talking in the dark to a detective and a reporter.

She listened intently.

“I wish you had a flashlight camera,” he was saying. “His wife will be here in a few minutes and the scene in that room would be worth ten thousand dollars. I have a good photograph of the woman you can use. You can get his anywhere.”

“It will be a great scoop on the other fellows who will write up the Temple without the Priestess!” the reporter whispered.

“I’d give a thousand dollars to see his face in the morning when he picks up your paper and reads its headlines,” chuckled the Deacon. “His eloquence, his bullfrog voice, his curling locks, his splendid eyes, will all be needed, and will all of them be inadequate to the occasion.”

“It will be tough on that beautiful woman, the scandal—by George, it’s a pity,” the reporter sighed.

“But it will be a great day for the little black-eyed spitfire wife of his he’s been neglecting for the past year. Her revenge will be sweet. I’ve been sorry enough for her.”

“I wonder if she will promptly sue for a divorce?”

“Yes; you can write that down without an interview,” the Deacon replied.

Ruth had come raging in anger against her husband. But the cold words of these men, whispering in the dark their joy over his downfall, stopped the beat of her heart.

She could see the big cruel headlines in the morning paper, holding her beloved up to shame in the hour of his triumph. Surely this would be what he deserved. But she loved him—yes, good or bad, she loved him. He was the hero of her girl’s soul, the father of her beautiful children, and in spite of all his coldness and neglect he was her heart&rsq............