Skinny Island Read Online Free PDF

of the body. I doubt if it even existed among the Christians of the Roman era. I like to think of that as a pale, clear time when chaste youths and maidens met in grave communion to worship God in gardens secluded from the persecuting eye. There must have been a cheerfulness in their courage, a quiet humor in their conviviality, a high seriousness in their acceptance of both happiness and martyrdom. It must have been the furthest possible thing from those smelly hermits living on locusts in the desert and hurling anathemas!"
    Gordon spoke with such fire and eloquence that Jane wondered if he were not rehearsing a sermon. She thought she might have read something not unlike what he was saying in that beautiful novel,
Marius the Epicurean.
But literature was one thing, and playing with fire another.
    "Some of those hermits were saints," she pointed out in mild reproach.
    "Ah, yes, they triumphed! More, in spite of what Swinburne wrote, than the pale Galilean. But that needn't mean that the pale ones weren't equally valid. Indeed, I maintain that they were more so! And I suggest further, Aunt Jane, that when an attraction existed between two of them, an attraction, let us say, that could not be lawfully indulged, they would use it to intensify their Christian love so that love became a radiant flame! It may even have been so between the beloved disciple and our Lord. St. John may have adored the master with all his soul, with all his heart, with all his mind, and, yes, with all his body!"
    "But they were men," Jane gasped.
    "There can be such affections among men, Aunt Jane. Look at the Greeks."
    "Gordon!"
    "Now don't get excited. I am talking about
sublimated
things." The young man's eyes now flashed with such authority that Jane felt subdued. She looked about at the stylish ladies in the booths and around at the tall brown dead walls of the gymnasium and wondered that this undeniable slice of reality could encompass so ethereal a soul as Gordon's. But
was
it ethereal? Wasn't it too fevered? Too ecstatic? He might scorn the filthy hermits of the desert sands, but did they not have expert knowledge of the devil? She closed her eyes and moved her lips in prayer.
    "Aune Jane! Are you praying for me?"
    "No, dear boy. For myself. I am praying that you will accept the offer I am about to make to you."
    "Accept? You mean it's a present?"
    "A kind of present."
    "Dear Aunt Jane! Of course I accept. What is it?"
    "A trip to the Holy Land. Oh, more than that. A year in the Holy Land! If you could take a leave of absence from the church."
    Gordon stared at her, his eyes full of surprise and questions. "I've always wanted to go to the Holy Land," he said gravely.
    "I know that. And you could learn about those early Christians you admire so. Oh, my child, it could be the—" She stopped herself. "It could be the making of you." She had almost said the "saving."
    "But how could I accept such a gift? And how could you afford it?"
    "I have my savings."
    "Your savings? Oh, Aunt Jane, how could I take
them?
"
    "To make me happy. And to please God. I believe he wishes you to go."
    Again he stared at her, and she seemed to make out a tiny diamond glittering in each pupil. He was so intense that he had to moisten his lips before he spoke. "You mean you've had guidance?"
    "Yes!" she cried recklessly. "Guidance!" She elapsed her hands. "Oh, my boy, I
know
you must go!"
    He looked down for a long time at the floor in silent study. "I suppose a true friend would understand if God really meant me to go."
    "A true friend?" She was afraid that she might have exposed herself by the very rigidity of her failure to glance in the direction of a certain booth.
    "A friend who really loved me would have to appreciate the necessity of my going," he continued pensively.
    "Like those early Christians."
    He looked up suspiciously. "Aunt Jane, you're not laughing at me?"
    "Never, dear boy. Not for all the world!"

    "But of course you can accept them, Jane! He took