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A minister! The word echoed and re-echoed through the corridors—otherwise empty, she’d swear—of Jean’s mind as the dinner prepared by the Contessa’s Italian chef progressed. Antipasto gave way to brodo e parmagioni without registering the change in flavor or consistency. Each time she glanced under a fringe of lashes in Christopher Wynne’s direction—steel to magnet—she was provincially conscious of the bareness of her back. If only she had a scarf.

Tapers, a profusion of them—thin blades of light as many—heavy laces—color and scent of flowers—massive silver—crystal frail as a breath—sheen of velvet—flash of jewels—liveried servants impersonal as the tribe Televox—the glorious Fanfani theatrically effective in a high back palace chair. Jean was subconsciously aware of it all as a background for her confused thought.

A minister! How could he be and look like that? He was so—so human. To be sure her acquaintance with members of his profession was as slight as her acquaintance with higher mathematics. Church attendance had been limited to Christmas and Easter. Always Easter. Sometimes Christmas. Fortunate that none of the guests were relying upon her for conversation. She had been placed at the opposite end of the table from the Contessa. Christopher Wynne and Zambaldi were discussing music with their hostess. Miss Calvin, Susie, her father called her, between the clergyman and Hugh Randolph at Jean’s left, was listening to them, still eyes narrowed as though in calculation. Luther Calvin—as controlled as an ice-machine and about as glowing—at Jean’s right was talking with the woman who had entered the room with Christopher Wynne. His wife? Curious the resemblance between them. They couldn’t have been married long. A minister’s wife! Frightful destiny! How dare she look so smart? She was as lovely as she was modish. One could imagine a man being quite mad about her. Her hair was silky blue-black, her eyes luminously gray, like water with the sun on it—when she laughed her large mouth dimpled adorably at the corners. As though she felt Jean’s intent scrutiny she looked at her and smiled. A lovely smile which sank into the girl’s heart as might a glowing star into the depths of a rather lonely pool. Her voice was low with a vivid note:

“I was telling Mr. Calvin, Miss Randolph, of Chris’s experience this afternoon as traffic officer.”

As though he had waited for an excuse to cut in Hugh Randolph asked:

“Why was he called upon, Miss Wynne?”

Miss Wynne! Impulsively Jean inquired:

“Aren’t you Mrs. Wynne?”

“No, I’m Constance, Christopher’s twin.” As she looked at Hugh Randolph to answer his question Jean sensed Luther Calvin’s annoyance at the interruption of his monopoly.

“It was Luke Carter’s shift at the Crossroads this afternoon. His wife is ill. Chris was at the house this morning and realized that Carter was needed at home. He went to City Hall to explain to the Chief. Not a man available to take Carter’s place. Chris directed traffic during the police strike, he is in the Reserve, so he volunteered to serve for Luke. The Chief was only too glad to get him. Made him swear, first, though, that he would let no ministerial soft-heartedness interfere with discipline. He needn’t have worried. Chris has a firm conviction that motorists who jeopardize the lives of others are unsafe persons to be at large.”

“Did he reap a good-sized crop of law-breakers?” inquired Luther Calvin with a tightening of his thin lips.

“He’d like to turn the thumb-screws on the poor offenders, old inquisitor,” Jean thought, as she eyed him with poorly repressed contempt.

“I haven’t heard, Mr. Calvin. Chris reached home only in time to change. We managed to slide in just before the doors were closed.” She took advantage of a lull in the conversation at the other end of the table to inquire:

“Did you have any thrilling experiences this afternoon, Christopher?”

Her brother laughed reminiscently.

“Near-thrilling. A flivver laid down and died in the middle of traffic at the Crossroads. Coroner’s verdict, old age. Two cars piled up on it. Then—”

Jean caught her breath. Was it her turn?

“A saturnine gentleman in a frock coat with velvet collar and a posy in his buttonhole engaged me in earnest conversation while a car with a curious sag to its back axle passed. He was not so engaging, however, that I failed to note the driver and the number of the weighted car. I phoned the Chief and they caught it with the goods before it crossed the city line.” He smiled at his hostess. “And you insist that my job is dull.”

Jean dared with a hint of defiance in voice and eyes:

“Is that all? You had me all excited. Didn’t you arrest a motorist or two?”

His eyes met hers.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but, that is really all that happened—out of the ordinary. Of course there are always petty law-scoffers. You were saying, Contessa—”

Jean’s cheeks burned. All that had happened “out of the ordinary.” He had classed her with the herd. She had been smartly slapped and set in a corner.

Later in the drawing-room her indignation waned under the magic of Christopher Wynne’s voice. The face of Zambaldi who was accompanying him on the piano was pasty from emotion, his red-rimmed eyes liquid pools. She glanced surreptitiously at Calvin. He sat with finger-tips together, lips clamped, his face like stone, his eyes still. New England granite, her grandmother had said, as hard and as cold. The Contessa in another palace chair, glistening nailed finger-tips soundlessly keeping time on its arm, red spots of excitement out-rouging the rouge in her cheeks, kept her eyes on the face of the impresario. From the scores of music on the piano Christopher Wynne sang song after song. He protested as Zambaldi produced another.

“No more. Remember that there are others who are not so music-mad as we are.”

Zambaldi mopped his moist brow with an elaborately monogrammed handkerchief, fine as a spider’s web, as he seated himself beside the Contessa.

“Will you tell me why with that voice you became a preacher?”—disdain ineffable in the last word—“when you could have become a world famous singer?”

Luther Calvin unclamped his lips. Protested caustically:

“I object to your scornful use of the word, preacher, Mr. Zambaldi. Have you forgotten that the good book says: ‘How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?’ ”

Zambaldi’s grunt was skeptical.

“All preaching isn’t done in the pulpit. I’ve seen a singing voice accomplish what talking never could have done in years.”

Still standing beside the piano Christopher Wynne agreed:

“So have I, Signor Zambaldi. Because I deeply appreciate the interest you and the Contessa have shown in my voice and because I want you both to understand that I shall be neither lured, prodded nor frightened into opera, I’ll tell you how music influenced me. I was serving my second term as interne at an hospital when I went overseas. All my forbears had been physicians, I had no thought of any other profession for myself.” His eyes and voice deepened as he went on:

“For a year I served on what the French called the Front of the Front, mending broken bones and torn flesh, relieving pain, helping the agonized to slip peacefully away. Ministering to the men’s bodies, I felt helpless to bring light into the dark places of their hearts and souls, that they might approach their rendezvous with death in peace with themselves, in the assurance that they were but passing on to renewed life.”

“Dio mio! Who but a dreamer like you expects anything but shadows after death? We begin life with a cell, we will end when life goes out of it,” interrupted the Contessa bitterly.

Christopher Wynne shook his head.

“I can’t believe that. You wouldn’t had you seen life go out as many times as I have. You would be convinced that unused vitality and strength and experience won by valiant living was of use somewhere. There is no waste in nature. Over there I realized that had I been in closer touch with spiritual realities I might have helped more.

“One night far, far back of the lines I heard men singing. A New England company starting for the Front. I can’t tell you what that music did to me. It crashed barriers of doubt and indifference, it roused a new purpose. Picture to yourself inky black heavens shot through and through with search-lights, the accompaniment of distant guns, of airplanes droning overhead, men singing with lusty fervor:

“ ‘O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come;

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

A thousand ages in thy sight,

Are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night,

Before the rising sun.’ ”

The rich voice ceased. For a few seconds the air billowed with melodic waves. Someone camouflaged emotion by a cough. The spell was broken. Through misty eyes Jean regarded one listener after another. The song had made as much of a dent in the composure of the Calvins as it would on the face of a granite ledge; Zambaldi was having trouble with his nose; Constance Wynne’s eyes were starry as she gazed at her brother; the tragic lines in Hugh Randolph’s face had deepened as he frowned into space. Jean, who many a time unemotionally had struck the sonorous opening chords of the hymn on the organ, felt as though a ten-ton tractor had ploughed up her emotions. Cheerfully she could have pinched the Contessa when she observed triumphantly:

“Did I not tell you, Luigi? Not since Battistini in his prime have I heard such beauty and freedom in upper notes. Mr. Wynne not only has a voice but dramatic ability. He had even you in tears with the story of his—shall we call it conversion? Do not despair. We will have him where we want him yet. There is more than one way to get what one is after.”

Christopher Wynne flushed darkly. He opened his lips to speak. Closed them. Zambaldi implored tearfully:

“But think—think what you could do for men’s souls with song, Mr. Wynne!” He gesticulated with his soft white hands as he went on:

“With that exquisite pianissimo of the same vital quality as your full voice. You don’t bleat, you don’t yell, you don’t gasp. Somewhere you’ve learned that there can be more of passion, more of sorrow in a beautifully turned musical phrase than in all manner of sobbing. Dio mio! Your voice would waft men straight to heaven.”

“Heaven!” Calvin’s downeast twang was intensified as he protested fanatically:

“The opera and all that goes with it leads straight to hell.”

Zambaldi bristled like a bantam cock.

“Narrow men like you, Calvin—”

Christopher Wynne’s laugh had a boyish quality.

“Have I precipitated a battle by my simple statement of cause and effect? It is always a mistake to turn one’s heart inside out for inspection, sometime I’ll learn that. Con, I have work to do at home.”

His sister rose.

“Good-night, Contessa di Fanfani. I’m not entirely grateful to you for having emphasized the beauty of Christopher’s voice. I’m not any too resigned to having him work as he is working in this small city. I know that I shouldn’t have said it, Chris, but just this once I had to.”

Her brother protested:

“Small city! Not for long. Garston is expanding industrially, it’s due any minute now to burst from the chrysalis of custom and tradition, a great, brilliant, indestructible moth of progress and achievement.” Jean felt his eyes on her as he attested: “It’s growing. It is neither dead—nor sleeping.”

Later as he said good-night, he reminded:

“I’ll see you tomorrow at ten, Miss Randolph. Sorry. But it had to be done.”

Not until the brother and sister and the Calvins had departed did Jean realize what he had meant. The summons. Court. Of course he would be there to testify against her. Darn! And he a minister!

As she and her father bade their hostess good-night the Contessa boasted:

“Dio mio! You think Zambaldi and I are beaten, Hugh? We are not. When we go after a voice we get it, especially a voice in accord with old Italian traditions, not to be found among the singers today.” She tossed her head, her black eyes, set in dark rings of fatigue, sparkled like those of an ancient and ill tempered bird as she threatened:

“Christopher Wynne has impracticable ideas as to the mission of a clergyman, thinks he should give his time to the spiritual needs of his people, not to the business side of the church. I will start something which will sweep him out of the pulpit into opera.” Her body shook, her long earrings quivered with excitement. Zambaldi laid a fat, pudgy hand on her bare arm. Chided:

“Now, now, Vittoria. No tantrums. It is bad for your voice.” Madama la Contessa sank back in the palace chair and began to cry.

The impresario waved a protesting, I-can-manage-her hand as Jean started toward her. Hugh Randolph drew his daughter from the room. As they crossed the foyer they could hear the excited voice of the Contessa and the conciliatory rumble of Zambaldi’s. In the garden Jean asked curiously:

“Why, why did a man so alive, so—so—to use an absurdly overworked word—but it is the only one which expresses him—so vital, a young man like Christopher Wynne go into the ministry? It is incredible in this age and generation.”

“He told you why.”

“But he could have done as much, more good it seems to me, in medicine. Surely physicians minister.”

Hugh Randolph stopped to look thoughtfully up at the stars before he asked irrelevantly:

“Why out of all musical instruments did you select the organ to play?”

“Why—why—I don’t know, unless because its tones seem to satisfy something in here,” she laid her hand on her breast. Her voice was tinged with embarrassment as she added, “Sounds like sheer sentimentality, doesn’t it?”

“No, I understand. Christopher Wynne went into the ministry for the same reason doubtless, in response to an urge within him. Remember what Napoleon said when he saw Goethe? ‘There’s a man!’ I always have that feeling when I meet Christopher Wynne. I’m not religious, but always I feel his spiritual vitality.”

“Will the Contessa succeed in prying him from his dull job?”

Hugh Randolph stopped to light a cigarette. In the flare of the match his face looked white and drawn. The light from the laughing moon, riding high in a chariot of fleecy clouds drawn by a tandem of shaggy white ponies, silvered the nymph of the fountain.

“It depends upon what she does. The desire is becoming an obsession. She has a devilish ingenuity in ferreting out the weak spots in character, of piercing to the quick. I like her. Have always liked her. I admire people who do things, but I wouldn’t trust her. She would scrap courtesy, principles, honesty any time to get what she wants.”

“How she dramatizes life. She was the glorious Fanfani in Madame Butterfly when she caught me in her arms. I was embarrassed to tears. Curious that she should interfere in a man’s life. She is always egging Mother on to be independent, to work out her destiny, as she expresses it.”

“That is because your mother’s career doesn’t affect her. She would do anything to get her own way. You never would be mean or dishonest but you have a strain of that I’ll-have-what-I-want-and-let-the-world-go-hang quality yourself, Jean. Watch your step.”

The girl opened her lips to protest indignantly. Thought better of it. Asked:

“But why should the Contessa set her heart upon juggling the Reverend Christopher into opera? What will she get out of it?”

“Glory. She is a deposed celebrity clamoring for the spotlight again. Think what a glare of publicity for her and for Zambaldi were they to be credited with the discovery of a supreme artist? They would be acclaimed. The triumphs of the glorious Fanfani would be recounted the world over. She would emerge from the sanctuary to which she fled, when her voice gave out during a performance.”

“If Old Stone-face Calvin could have unclamped his mouth long enough I am sure he would have bitten the Contessa and Zambaldi. He was rigid with disapproval all evening.”

“He would be. He is a religious fanatic. He was the last man in his church organization to hold out against unity. He lives on a mental island—remote, wilfully ignorant of the fact that this age takes its religion practically, is building up a faith which combines the old understanding and the new, that it demands surcease of waste in effort and funds in the church life. He is feared and kowtowed to because of his financial influence. He’s a wizard in business. I know little about technique but to me Christopher Wynne’s voice is remarkable. By the way, what did he mean when he said he would see you tomorrow.”

Jean slipped a cajoling hand within her father’s arm.

“Sorry, Hughie, I didn’t want you to know. This afternoon the Terrible Twin suggested a dashing entrance into Garston. I speeded down Main Street. A traffic-cop held up his hand. I kept on. How could I know that the clergyman had dropped his robe for khaki. He stepped in front of the car. I thought for one horrible instant there would be a crash.”

“And then?”

“He jumped to the running-board and ordered me to the curb. I told him who I was. It made no difference. I smiled my traffic-cop special and—”

“And didn’t get away with it. Unfortunate that the Terrible Twin—are you never to give her the slip, Jean—selected this special time to butt in. Excitement is seething under the surface. The workmen claim that there is discrimination in automobile discipline, that the rich slide by with fines, that the poor are punished. I’m sorry it happened, but, I’ll go to court with you tomorrow and make things easy.”

A sense of humiliation so rare as to be unrecognizable for what it was ruffled Jean’s voice as she protested:

“No, you won’t. I will go by my lonesome. I’m no short-sport. Having gotten myself into this mess I won’t drag you in with me. I’ll crash through. Just the same, I’ll make the Reverend Christopher hate the day he turned traffic-cop. If there is any being on earth I can’t stand it is an earnest young man.”