HIS work should be of a vastly different order.

He might fairly assume, he thought, that if the fact that Abram was a Chaldean was new to him, it would fall upon the world in general as a novelty.

Very well, then, there was his chance.
He would write a learned book, showing who the Chaldeans were, and how their manners and beliefs differed from, and influenced-- It was at this psychological instant that the wave of self-condemnation suddenly burst upon and submerged the young clergyman.

It passed again, leaving him staring fixedly at the pile of books he had taken down from the shelves, and gasping a little, as if for breath.

Then the humorous side of the thing, perversely enough, appealed to him, and he grinned feebly to himself at the joke of his having imagined that he could write learnedly about the Chaldeans, or anything else.