Chapter I

'As soon,' Dr. Chalmers used to say, 'as soon as a man comes to understand that _GOD IS LOVE_, he is infallibly converted.' Mrs. Florence L. Barclay wrote a book to show how Rodney Steele made that momentous and transfiguring discovery. Rodney Steele--the hero of _The Wall of Partition_--was a great traveler and a brilliant author. He had wandered through India, Africa, Australia, Egypt, China and Japan, and had written a novel colored with the local tints of each of the countries he had visited. He was tall, strong, handsome, bronzed by many suns, and--largely as a result of his literary successes--immensely rich. But he was soured. Years ago he loved a beautiful girl. But an unscrupulous and designing woman had gained his sweetheart's confidence and had poisoned her heart by pouring into her ear the most abominable scandals concerning him. She had returned his letters; and he, in the vain hope of being able to forget, had abandoned himself to travel and to literature. But, on whatever seas he sailed, and on whatever shores he wandered, he nursed in his heart a dreadful hate--a hate of the woman who had so cruelly intervened. And, cherishing that hate, his heart became hard and bitter and sour. He lost faith in love, in womanhood, in God, in everything. And his books reflected the cynicism of his soul. This is Rodney Steele as the story opens. The boat-train moves into Charing Cross, and, after an absence of ten years, he finds himself once more in London.