Mrs. Gray considered.  The chief guest room stood ready, immaculate in yellow and white, since the spring cleaning.  There was no reason why it should be denied, but she had hoped that its repose would not be broken until Miss Virginia White, her most aristocratic friend, should make her promised visit.  However, it would be manifestly unreasonable to refuse to receive Mr. Bond, and she could not offer him another room while that stood empty.  Yes, the yellow-and-white room must be sacrificed.

“No, Father,” she said amiably, “there is no reason why we cannot take him.  When will he come?”

“He arrives this evening by the eight o’clock train from New York.  Hubert, perhaps you would like to meet him?”

“I should,” said Hubert.  “I am glad he is coming here.”

“So am I,” said Winifred.  “It will be lovely.”

That afternoon Winifred “called up” her friend Adele, and the telephone transmitted a lively conversation.  The result of it was that Adele promised to go with Winifred to Mr. Bond’s Bible lectures; at least to one, to see if she liked it.

In the evening Hubert met Mr. Bond at the station.  They were scarcely seated in the light trap and facing toward home when the young minister said: 

“Well, Mr. Gray, have you found God demonstrable?”

“Yes!” Hubert almost shouted, and the two grasped each other’s hands in the strong grip of a fraternity never formed by man.

“I thought so,” said Mr. Bond.

“How did you know?” said Hubert.

“I thought it would be so,” said the other, “and I saw it in your face as we met.  Thank God for it.”

“Amen,” said Hubert fervently.

Mr. Bond led Hubert on with keen interest to tell of the process of his search after God, and of the illumination brighter than the light of day, that came to him when the Spirit shone with such clear luster on the Word.  To Hubert it seemed the happiest hour of his life, as he conversed with a man who seemed to understand the processes of his own heart, and to be thoroughly at home in the new world into which he himself had entered.

The drive was all too brief, but later in the evening, when good-night had been spoken to the rest of the household, the two men sat in the unlighted veranda and talked until midnight of Christ and the matters of His realm.

The tout ensemble of the company gathered to hear Mr. Bond’s first lecture was somewhat curious.  It was not a large congregation, but it was representative, being drawn from the interested or curious of nearly every kind of church or religious coterie in the city.  Keen Bible students were there, notebooks in hand, prepared to capture any new suggestion which might help them.  The critical were there, representing various shades of belief and prejudice, from the quiet repressionist, who, disdaining emotion, views with dispassionate coldness the great tenets of the faith,