The six months abroad which Gordon and Kate had spent in love’s dreaming and drifting had been the fulfilment to the man of the long-felt yearnings of his fierce subconscious nature.

To the woman it had been the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. She had found herself, the real self, at whose first meeting in the kiss of a man she had trembled. She was no longer afraid. The elemental clear-eyed goddess had taken possession. She had claimed her own, the throne of a queen, and the man who had dreamed of kingship was her courtier.

She was smiling at him in conscious power, her violet eyes flashing with mystery and magic, the sunlight of Italy gleaming through her dark red hair, her full lips half parted with dreamy tenderness, and her sinuous body moving with indolent grace.

“To be your slave is crown enough for man,” he cried.

“And I am in heaven,” she answered, proudly.

“Only, thus, in perfect freedom,” he said, in rapture, “is the fulness of life. Beauty and harmony and love are of God. Surely this is communion with Him—the joy of embraces, the touch of sunlight, the glory of form and colour, the magic of music, the poetry of love, the ecstacy of passion, the kiss of the senses—He is in all and over all.”

“Can such happiness be eternal?” she asked, under her breath.

He kissed her softly.

“If God be infinite.”

They reached New York the first week in November, and Gordon returned to his work with renewed zeal.

The success of his movement was a source of continued surprise and fear to the more thoughtful students of social and religious life.

But Gordon had found on his return an increasing amount of friction between opposing groups in his church which was a source of intense surprise and annoyance. Two factions had broken into an open quarrel in his absence. He found it necessary to devote a large part of his time to smoothing out these quarrels between men who had come together with the principles of unity and fellowship as the foundation of their association. He saw with disgust that he was gathering a crowd of cranks, conceited and stupid, vain and ambitious for fame and leadership. It was all he could do to prevent a battle of Kilkenny cats.

He discovered that many things glittered at a banquet to celebrate universal brotherhood which did not pan out pure gold in the experiment of life. He had heard at such a love feast an aristocratic poet extoll in harangue the unwashed Democracy, a Walking Delegate read a poem, a Jew quote the Koran with unction, a Mohammedan eulogise Monogamy, a Single-Taxer declare himself a Democrat, a Socialist glorify Individualism, and an Anarchist express his love for Order.

But he found next day that as a rule the Egyptian resumed the use of garlic and the hog went back to his wallow.

He found to his chagrin that mental freedom could be made a cloak for the basest mental slavery, and that the most hide-bound dogmatist on earth is the modern crank who boasts his freedom from all dogmas. He found the Liberal to be the most illiberal and narrow man he had ever met.

The absurdity of allowing this mob of Kilkenny cats any authority in his church he saw at once. His dream of triumphant Democracy faded.

He seized the helm at once.

Without a moment’s hesitation he threw out twenty ringleaders of as many factions and restored order. Under such conditions he dared not even incorporate his society under the laws of the state as a religious body lest these incongruous elements control its property and wreck its work. He continued to expend the vast funds needed for his Temple in his wife’s name, leaving its legal ownership vested in her as before.

Within a few months the extraordinary beauty and vivacity of his wife made their house on Gramercy Park the rendezvous of a brilliant group of free-lances and Bohemians. Her mother and father had moved to a house on the opposite side of the park. Men and women of genius in the world of Art and Letters who cared nought for conventions had crowded her receptions. She was nattered with the pleasant fiction that she had restored the ancient Salon of France on a nobler basis.

The increase of her social duties required more and more of her time at the dressmaker’s, and left less and less for work in Gordon’s congregation.

At first he had watched this social success with surprise and pride, and then with an increasing sense of uneasiness for its significance in the development of her character.

The sight of half a dozen handsome men bending over her, enchanted by her beauty, and the ring of her laughter at their wit, irritated him. He had not been actor enough to conceal from her the gleam of, worry in his eyes and the accent of fret in his voice at these functions. She observed, too, that he attended them with regularity, however important might be the work which called him outside.

He was anxious for her to cultivate a few of his intimate friends, but this crowd of strange men and women bored him.

He was especially anxious that she should meet Over............