preened herself as if flattered by being noticed at last, even by implication.) "I'm thinking only of your own good."
"I'm not going back," repeated Philip dully.
The singsong voice of Uncle Elmer went on: "Of course, once you've had the call—there's no mistake. You can't turn back from the Lord once you've heard the call."
"I never had the call."
"What do you mean? You can't imagine a thing like that. Nobody ever imagined he heard the Lord calling him."
"It's true, though—I must have imagined it."
He couldn't say, somehow, what he wanted to say, because it wasn't clear in his own mind. He had thought he had heard the call, but now he saw it wasn't really so at all. He felt vaguely that his mother was somehow responsible for the feeling.
Uncle Elmer waited for a time, as if to lend weight to his words.
"Do you understand that it is a great sin—to abandon the Lord's work—the greatest sin of which a human creature can be guilty?"
Philip was trembling now like a man under torture. He couldn't fight back, somehow, because he was all confused, inside, deep down in his soul. It was as if his brain were all in knots.
"I don't know what is sin and what isn't. I've been thinking about it—I used to think of it for hours at a time at Megambo, I couldn't do my work for thinking of it—I don't know what is sin and what isn't, and you don't either. None of us know."
"We all know, Philip. The Bible tells us."
