"No, Mary. He is not built that way. It's his one big fault. Always to
be what he thinks people have labeled him, or to seem to be. To be that
in defiance, knowing in his heart he really isn't that at all. It's a
curious psychological study. It makes me think of nothing else but when
the Prince of the Power of the Air wanted to be God. Mark wants to be a
young God. When he finds he's not taken that way he makes himself look
like the devil in defiance. Don't you remember, Mary, how when Bob
Bliss broke that memorial window in the church and said it was Mark did
it, how Mark stood looking, defiantly from one to another of us to see
if we would believe it, and when he found the elders were all against
him and had begun to get ready for punishment, he lifted his fine young
shoulders, and folded his arms, and just bowed in acquiescence, as if
to say yes, he had done it? Don't you remember, Mary? He nearly broke
my heart that day, the hurt look in his eyes; the game, mistaken,
little devil! He was only ten, and yet for four long months he bore the
blame in the eyes of the whole village for breaking that window, till
Bob told the truth and cleared him. Not because he wanted to save Bob
Bliss, for everybody knew he was a little scamp, and needed punishment,
but because he was hurt--hurt way down into the soul of him to
think anybody had thought he would want to break the window we
had all worked so hard to buy. And he actually broke three cellar
windows in that vacant store by the post office, yes, and paid for
them, just to keep up his character and give us some reason for our
belief against him."
The wife with a cloud of anxiety in her eyes, and disapproval in her
voice, answered slowly: "That's a bad trait, Graham. I can't understand it. It is something
wrong in his nature."
"Yes, Mary, it is sin, original sin, but it comes at him from a
different direction from most of us, that's all. It comes through
sensitiveness. It is his reaction to a deep and mortal hurt. Some men
would be stimulated to finer action by criticism, he is stimulated to
defy, and he does not know that he is trying to defy God and all the
laws of the universe. Some day he will find it out, and know that only
through humility can he make good."