So it came about that the serpent of misgiving entered into the Prophet's paradise.

With Enid Witcherley's words, the realization of his true position had been unpleasantly suggested to him, and the grain of doubt had been scattered over the banquet he had set himself to enjoy.
It was one thing to fool men who yearned to be fooled--even to fool women whose peculiarities set them apart from their sex; but it was indisputably another matter to dupe a young and confiding girl, who came with all the fascination of modern doubt, counterbalanced by the charm of feminine credulity.
Long after she left him, he had paced up and down the room in perplexity of spirit, until at last, with a sudden contempt for his own weakness, he had turned to where the white binding of the Scitsym caught the subdued light.

The sight of the book had nerved him, as it never failed to do; but for all his regained firmness, the sense of uneasy shame had remained with him during the day; and that night, when he addressed his people, he had instinctively guarded his glance from resting on the seats that fronted the Sanctuary.
But now that first interview was past by three weeks, and Enid's daily visits to the great room where he gave audience to the congregation had become one of the recognized events of the twenty-four hours.

The sense of shame returned periodically; but on each renewal of the feeling he salved his conscience more and more successfully with the assurance that to her, as to himself, the Mystics were in reality nothing but the products of a neurotic age--mere hysterical dabblers in the truths of the universe.

She was too delicately feminine, he told himself with growing conviction, too intelligent and self-controlled, to be more than temporarily attracted to any such exotic creed.