“Elise!” echoed John wonderingly, after the first shock of grief was over.

“My wife,” said Reginald proudly.  “You must come home at once and let me show you the sweetest woman in the world.”

“Not just yet, Rege I must pay a visit to Mrs. O’Flannigan, then there is the hospital, and the dispensary, and I promised to concoct a bed for a poor fellow in the last stages of heart trouble.  But I will come to-night.”

“Always helping somewhere, John.  What a grand fellow you are!”

“We are in the world to help the world, else what were the use of living?”

“I can’t do anything,” said Reginald, “with this clog.”  He looked contemptuously at his ebony crutch as he spoke.

John laid his hand upon his arm.  “Rege,” he said in his old, tender way.  “I think this very ‘clog’ as you call it, is a preparation to help those who are passing through the baptism of pain.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Reginald Hawthorne welcomed her husband’s friend with a winning charm.  She was very pretty, very graceful and very young.  Reginald idolized her.  John saw that as he looked around the sumptuous home whose every fitting was a tribute to her taste.  They had just finished unpacking the things they had brought from Europe.

“Strangely enough,” said Reginald with a laugh, “I told Elise this morning that now I was going to start out in search of you!”

He had developed wonderfully.  John saw that too.  Travel and trial had brought out the good that was in him—­but not the best.

The evening passed pleasantly.  Mrs. Hawthorne played beautifully, and Reginald had kept ears and eyes open and talked well.

“How about the other life, Rege?” asked John when they had a few moments alone.  “This one seems very fair.”

“All a humbug, John.  You Christians are chasing a will o’ the wisp, a jack o’ lantern.  You remember my fad for mathematics?  I have followed it up, and I find your theory a ‘reductio ad absurdum.’  I must have everything demonstrable and clear.  This is neither.”

“Yet it was a great mathematician who said, ’Omit eternity in your estimate of area and your solution is wrong.’”

Reginald shook his head.  “I have nothing to do with this faith business.  I go as far as I see, no further.”

“God calls our wisdom foolishness, Rege.  Jesus Christ put a tremendous premium upon the faith of a little child.”

“Things must be tangible for me to believe in them.  Reason is king with me.”

“Without faith in your fellow man—­and your wife—­you would have a poor time of it, Rege; why should you refuse to have faith in your God?  Is your will tangible, and can you demonstrate the mysterious forces of nature?  You know you can’t, Rege, you have to take them on trust; and if you had seen what I have, you would know that poor human reason is a pitiful thing!  But I won’t argue with you.  Some day you will understand.”