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“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For, if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”

The droning voice of the reader hummed in Margaret’s ears. She came to herself again, almost with a start, dimly conscious that the woman in crêpe in the next pew was watching her narrowly. She must sit out the service. She fell to studying the pattern of the embroidery on the altar cloths. It was in curiously woven arabesques, grouped about the monogram of Christ. Anything to withdraw her eyes from the face of the reader, for which she was beginning to feel a growing and unreasoning repulsion.

Throughout the remainder of the sermon she kept her gaze upon her open Bible, turning up mechanically all the cross references to the word “flesh.” She followed the contradistinction of flesh and spirit through the New Testament. It was the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, contrary the one to the other. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life—these all of the world.