The Mark of the Beast | Page 4

she had seated herself. A little later she was
missed from the company. She had slipped away to her room, after a
quiet good-night to her table-companion, Colonel Youlter.

* * * * * *
At ten-thirty, next morning, Judith Montmarte entered the library. The
Colonel was there already. He rose to meet her, saying, "Where will
you sit? Where will you be most comfortable."
There was a decidedly "comfo" air about the luxuriously-furnished
room. The eyes of the beautiful woman--she was twenty-eight--swept
the apartment and, finally, resting upon a delightful vis-a-vis, she
laughed merrily, as she said:
"Fancy finding a vis-a-vis, and of this luxurious type, too, in a library. I
always think it is a mistake to have the library of the house so stiff,
sometimes the library is positively forbidding."
She laughed lightly again, as she said. "I'm going off into a disquisition
on interiors, so--shall we sit here?"
She dropped into one of the curves of the vis-a-vis, and he took the
other.
For half-an-hour their talk on their pet subject was more or less general,
then he startled her by asking:
"Do you know the Christian New Testament, at all?"
"The Gospels, I have read," she replied, "and am fairly well familiar
with them. I have read, too, the final book, "The Revelation," which
though a sealed book to me, as far as knowledge of its meaning goes,
yet has, I confess, a perennial attraction for me."
She lifted her great eyes to his, a little quizzical expression in them, as
she added:
"You are surprised that I, a Jewess, should speak thus of the Gentile
scriptures!"
Then, without giving him time to reply, she went on:

"But why did you ask whether I knew anything of the New
Testament?"
"Because, apropos of what I said a moment ago, anent the repetition of
History, the Christ of the New Testament declared that "as the days of
Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be."
She nodded her beautiful head, as though she would assent to the
correctness of his quotation.
"Now I make no profession of being ultra-Christian," he went on, "but I
know the letter of the Bible quite as well as most Teachers of
Christianity, and without intending any egotism I am sure I dare to say
that I know it infinitely better than the average Christian. And if I was a
teacher or preacher of the Christian faith I would raise my voice most
vehemently against the wilful, sinful ignorance of the Bible on the part
of the professed Christians. Members of the various so-called
'churches,' seem to know everything except their Bibles. Mention a
passage in Spenser, William Wordsworth, Whittier, Longfellow,
Tennyson, Browning, or even Swinburne, William Watson, Charles
Fox, Carleton, or Lowell, and they can pick the volume off the shelf in
an instant, and the next instant, they have the book open at your
quotation. But quote Jude or Enoch, or Job on salt with our eggs, and
they go fumbling about in the mazes of Leviticus, or the Minor
Prophets."
He laughed, not maliciously, but with a certain pitying contempt, as he
said:
"The average professing Christian is about as much like the New
Testament model of what he should be, as is the straw-stuffed
scarecrow in the field, in the pockets of the costume of which the birds
conceive it to be the latest joke to build. But I am digressing, I was
beginning about the 'days of Noah' and their near future repetition on
the earth."
"'Near repetition?' How do you mean, Colonel?" Judith Montmarte
leaned a little eagerly toward him. In the ordinary way, alone with a

man of his type she would have played the coquette. To-day she
thought nothing of such trifling. There was something so different in
his manner, as he spoke of the things that were engaging them, to even
the ordinary preacher.
The pair were as utterly alone as though they had been on the wide,
wide sea together in an open boat. She had said truly, over-night, "no
one ever comes near the library."
"I mean," he said, replying to her question, "that the seven chief causes
of the apostasy which brought down God's wrath upon the
Antediluvians, have already begun to manifest themselves upon the
earth, in such a measure as to warrant one's saying that 'as it was in the
days of Noah, so it is again today,' and if the New Testament is true in
every letter--we may expect the Return of the Christ at any moment."
She was staring amazedly at him--enquiring, eager, but evidently
puzzled. But she made no sound or sign of interruption, and he went
on:
"The first element of the Antediluvian apostasy was the worship of God
as Creator