River of Dust by Virginia Pye Page B

of the message of sacrifice and endurance that the young Reverend had conveyed on the first day she had met him but because the sun had glinted off his fine spectacles and the hand that held his remarks had trembled most sincerely. There was no doubt in her mind that she had chosen her path well, especially because he had become enamored of her, too, not long after her arrival in Fenchow-fu, and their destiny together had been sealed.
        In a surprising magazine that had fallen into her hands during her brief stay in New York prior to her departure for Cathay, Grace had read the rather forward advice that a modern woman must take the reins in matters of the heart. Th e Lady's Realm printed articles not only about how women now had the right to vote in four Western states, whereas it was unheard-of in the rest of the country, but also on how a lady could manage her own honeymoon. The modern woman understood that when she married a gentleman greatly distracted by ambition, she must nonetheless persevere with her own hopes and dreams. Grace was not sure what her own hopes and dreams might be, but she recognized that the Reverend was a man much distracted by ambition.
        Indeed, the man before her today bore none of the human frailty and lack of surety of the young man she had first met but instead, was a substantial figure who had achieved a great deal. She rather liked that he appeared now as the Chinese had come to see him— as a bear, a giant, an oversized miracle of a man. Ghost Man, they called him, and she could see why.
        Grace reminded herself that as a girl of twenty, she could instead have become a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse on the Midwestern plains, a librarian in the college town, or most certainly a secretary to one of her father's fellow academics on campus. Instead, four years before, she had followed a man in whom she sensed greatness into the desert halfway around the world, and it was here that she now watched him spin his words into blazing gold.
        "I, too, am a sinner," the Reverend called out in a fiery voice. "I am one of the fallen."
        Grace glanced about and saw that the Chinese sat on the edges of the pews, their whole bodies tilting toward him, their hands clasped and their eyes rapt in attention. The other ministers and their wives shifted uneasily in their seats. The Reverend's sudden urge for selfrevelation was not at all the usual approach to their mission. Grace dared to look again at Mildred Martin and swallowed hard as she saw the older woman's jaw go slack and hang partially open. Her husband, Charles Martin, the Reverend's most loyal friend, looked on with an expression that could only be described as horror.
        Grace turned back to her husband and widened her beaming expression up at him. Unlike her compatriots, she was proud that on his journeys he seemed to have come to the same stark conclusion that she had in the several months since their disaster: she and the Revered were indeed sinners, and not just in any usual sense. The Martins might still believe themselves to be otherwise, but Grace, and apparently the Reverend as well, knew the truth. The Lord had chosen to reveal their sins by punishing them most thoroughly. They were, without a doubt, as fallen as Adam and Eve on the wretched morning when the Lord had raised His arm and pointed them out of Eden.
        "I am lower than the lowliest of beggars on the streets," the Reverend shouted. "I am as blind as the men whose eyes are crusted over with scabs. I am as infirm as those who lie in the streets with limbs hanging torn and useless. I am no better than the poorest of the poor, for my heart is black with sin."
        Grace felt a shiver rise up her spine. She feared she might faint, and yet she knew her face glowed with recognition. She understood as never before that she had been guilty of the sin of pride when, as a blithe and naive girl, she had been overly pleased with