Forget-me-not by Marjorie Bowen — Read

Pastor Frédéric Monet reluctantly left his church with the sense of discouragement that comes to an actor who, though successful, has not been, through convention, applauded. His faith was also his art and his livelihood, he had put into it all the aspirations of a simple heart, all the strength of a mediocre intelligence, he was most completely himself when he was preaching about the terrors of sin, the beauties of repentance and the joys of forgiveness of God.

When he was in the pulpit he became wrapped in an exultation that sometimes touched ecstasy; the reaction when he had to leave the empty church was always in proportion to his enthusiasm. He felt a vague melancholy, a slight disappointment, to think of all these people who had listened to him so silently, who should have been so impressed, scattering, passing away into trivialities of their daily lives, without, it seemed, either acknowledgment of his powers or need of his administrations. It was true that he knew some of his flock and that some of them came to him with their troubles but these were always very ordinary, and Frédéric Monet, a born missionary, a fervent, earnest believer in the mercies of God and the traps of the devil, had, he felt regretfully, so far neither met one nor the other, and his pleasant, amiable, hard-working ordinary life had not brought him into touch with the dramas of either crime or repentance.