This last he realized in one way but not in another.

He knew it on general principles; he recognized the fact as he recognized the fact of his hands and feet; but what he actually saw in the looking-glass was not so much the physical fact of himself as the spiritual problem with its two known quantities of need and circumstance, and its great unknown third which took hold of eternity.

Anderson, although not in a sense religious, had a religious trend of thought.

He went every Sunday with his mother to the Presbyterian church where his grandfather had preached to an earlier generation.
On the Sunday after his encounter with Arthur Carroll with reference to the bill, he went to church as usual with his mother.
Mrs.Anderson was a picture of a Sunday, in a rich lavender silk and a magnificent though old-fashioned lace shawl which floated from her shoulder in a fairy net-work of black roses.

She would never wear plain black like most women of her age.