Rufus returned from Tregannon in a condition of mental unrest, such as he had not known before. It was Madeline Grover in the first instance who set him thinking along certain lines, and once started it was impossible to turn back. During all the time he remained a prisoner in the house, his brain had been unusually active. Unconsciously his fierce antagonisms subsided, his revolt against accepted creeds took new shapes, his belief in German philosophy began to waver.

The process of mental evolution went on so quietly and silently, that he was almost startled when he discovered that his philosophic watchwords no longer represented his real beliefs. He felt as though while he slept all his beliefs had been thrown into the melting-pot to be cast afresh, and were now being poured out into new moulds. What the result would be when the process was complete it was impossible to say, but already one thing was certain, the blank negatives in which he once found refuge, would never again satisfy him. He might never evolve into an orthodox believer. The religiosity of the Churches appealed to him as little as ever it did. He despised the smug hypocrisy that on all hands usurped the place of Christianity, and defiled its name. He loathed the pretensions of priests and clerics of all sects. But out of the fog and darkness and uncertainty, certain great truths and principles loomed faintly and fitfully.

The fog was no longer an empty void. The silence was now and then broken by a sound of words, though the language was strange to his ears. There appeared to be a moral order which answered to his own need, and a moral order implied the existence of what he had so long denied.

His visit to his grandparents quickened his thoughts in the direction they had been travelling. Everything tended to serious reflection. The awful mystery and solemnity of life were forced upon him at all points. The old people walked and talked "as seeing Him who is invisible."

He was quietly amused when he returned from his long walk on Christmas day to find his grandfather and the young minister engaged in a heated argument on the barren and thorny subject of verbal inspiration. He would have stopped the discussion if he could, for he discovered that his grandfather was getting much the worst of the argument, and was losing his temper in consequence. But the old man refused to be silenced. Getting his chance of reply he poured out a torrent of words that swept everything before it, and to which there seemed to be no end.

Fortunately, tea was announced just as the young minister was about to reply, and over the tea-table conversation drifted into an entirely different channel. After tea the Rev. Reuben retired to his study accompanied by his wife, and Rufus and Mr. Brook were left in possession of the sitting-room.

As there was no evening service on Christmas Day the young minister felt free to relax himself. Conversation tripped lightly from point to point, from general to particular, from gay to grave, from serious to solemn.

They talked till supper time, and after supper Rufus walked with the young minister to his lodgings, and remained with him till long after midnight. The conversation was a revelation to Rufus in many ways. Marshall Brook was a scholar as well as a thinker. He was as familiar with the German writers as with the English. He was alive to all modern questions, conversant with all the work of the higher critics, alive to all that was fundamental in the creeds of the Churches, contemptuous of the narrowness and bigotry that brought religion into contempt, tolerant of all fresh light, patient and even sympathetic with every form of human doubt, and large-hearted and clear-eyed enough to see that there was good in everything.

Marshall Brook had often heard of his predecessor's sceptical grandson, and was glad of the opportunity of meeting him, and was charmed with him when they did meet. It was easy to discover where the shoe pinched, easy to see how and when the revolt began, easy to trace the successive steps from doubt to denial, from unbelief to blank negation.

Rufus talked freely and well. He knew that the young minister regarded him as an infidel, and he thought he might as well live up to the description. Marshall Brook led him on by easy and almost imperceptible steps. His first business was to diagnose the case, and if possible to find out the cause. For the first hour he allowed all Rufus's arguments to go by default.

But when they got to close grips Rufus felt helpless. This young scholar could state his case better than he could state it himself. He had traversed all the barren and thorny waste, and much more carefully than Rufus had ever done. He knew the whole case by heart; knew every argument and every objection. He tore the flimsy fabric of Rufus's philosophy to shreds and left him with scarcely a rag to cover himself with.

Rufus remained three days at Tregannon and spent the major portion of the time with Marshall Brook. Apart from the interest raised by the questions discussed, it was a delight to be brought into contact with a mind so fresh and well disciplined. They hammered out the pros and cons of materialistic philosophy with infinite zest. They wrestled with the joy of striplings at a village fair. They fought for supremacy with all their might, but in every encounter Rufus went under.

When he returned to St. Gaved he was in a condition of mental chaos. Nearly every prop on which he supported himself had been knocked away. He was certain of nothing, not even of his own existence.

It was not an uncommon experience; most thinking men have passed through it at one time or another. Destruction has often to precede construction. The old has to be demolished even to the foundations before the new building can arise.

Yet none save those who have passed through it can conceive the utter desolation and darkness of soul, during what may be called the interregnum. The old has been destroyed, the new has not yet taken shape. The ark has been sunk and the mountain peaks have not yet begun to appear above the flood. The frightened soul flits hither and thither across the waste of waters, seeking some place on which to rest its feet, and finding none; and unlike Noah's dove there is no ark to which it can return. It must remain poised on wing till the floods have assuaged and the foundations of things have been discovered.

In the last resort every man writes his own creed. No man, even mentally, can remain in a state of suspended animation for very long. A philosophy of negations is as abhorrent to the sensitive soul as a vacuum is to Nature. After destruction there is bound to be construction. Like beavers we are ever building, and when one dam has been swept away by the flood, we straightway set to work to build another.

Rufus was trying to evolve some kind of cosmos out of chaos when he met Madeline on the downs. She came upon him suddenly and unexpectedly and his heart leaped like a startled hare. How beautiful she was. How lissom and graceful and strong.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," she said, in her bright, frank, ingenuous way. "I am glad we have met."

"Yes?" he replied, not knowing what else to say.

"I have heard something about you recently and I would like to know if it is true."

"What have you heard?" he questioned, with a puzzled look on his face.

"That you are an infidel."

"Who told you that?"

"That is a matter of no consequence since it is common gossip."

For a moment he was silent, and turned his eyes seaward as if to watch the sun go down. "Are you pressed for time?" he asked without turning his eyes.

"No, I am quite free for the next hour," she answered, with a smile, though she wondered what the Tregonys would think if they knew.

"I owe a good deal to you," he began, slowly and thoughtfully.

"No, not to me, surely. I am the debtor," she interrupted.

"Yes, to you," he went on in the same slow, even way. "And if you care to know—that is, if you are interested—why then it will be a pleasure to talk to you—as it always has been——"

Then he paused and again turned his eyes toward the sea. She glanced at him shyly but did not reply.

"It is easy to call people names," he said, at length, without looking at her. "I do not complain, however. I have believed the things I could not help believing. Can we any of us do more than that?"

"I do not quite understand?" she answered, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

"I mean that the things we believe, or do not believe, are matters over which we have no absolute control. You believe what you believe because you cannot help it. You have not been coerced into believing it. The evidence is all-sufficient for you though it might not be for me. On the same ground I believe what I believe—because—because I cannot help myself. Do you follow me? Faith after all is belief upon evidence, and if the evidence is insufficient——"

"But what if people reject the evidence without weighing it, stubbornly turn their backs upon the light?" she interrupted.

"Then they are not honest," he said, quickly; "but I hope you do not accuse me of dishonesty?"

"I accuse you of nothing," she answered. "I have only told you what people are saying."

"And you are sorry?" and he turned, and looked her frankly in the face.

"I am very sorry," she replied, with a faint suspicion of colour on her cheeks.

"It is generous of you to be interested in me at all," he said, after a pause. "And if I were to tell you how much I value that interest you might not believe me."

She darted a startled glance at him, but she did not catch his eyes for he was looking seaward again, and for a moment or two there was silence.

"I should like to tell you everything about myself," he went on, at length, "my early troubles and battles, my boyish revolt against cruel and illogical creeds, my almost unaided pursuit of knowledge, my steady drift into blank negation; but I should bore you——"

"No, no!" she said, quickly. "I should like to hear all the story. I should, indeed. Really and truly."

They walked away northward, while the light went down in the West. The twilight deepened rapidly, and the frosty stars began to glimmer in the sky. But neither seemed to heed the gathering darkness nor the rapid flight of time.

Rufus talked without reserve; it is easy to talk when those who listen are sympathetic. He told the story of his father's death abroad, of his mother's grief, of his own bitter sense of loss. He sketched his grandfather—upright and severe—preaching a creed that was more fearsome than any nightmare. He spoke of their slender means and their fruitless efforts to get any of the property his father left. Of his granny's wish that he should be a draper, of his own ambition to be an engineer, and the compromise which landed him in Redbourne as a bank clerk. And through all the story there ran the deeper current of his mental struggles till at last he fancied he found the ultima Thule in pure materialism.

Madeline listened quite absorbed. It was the most interesting human document that had ever been unfolded to her, and all the more interesting because it was told with such artlessness and sincerity. Yet it was not a very heroic story as he told it. Rufus was no hero in his own eyes, and he was too honest to pretend to be what he was not. Perhaps, in his hatred of pretence he made himself out a less admirable character than he was in reality.

Madeline sighed faintly more than once. There were manifest weaknesses where there should have been strength. He had drifted here and there where he should have resisted, and taken for granted what he should have tried and tested.

"And you still remain on the barren rocks of your ultima Thule?" she questioned, at length.

He did not answer for several moments. Then he said quietly, "You will think me sadly lacking in mental balance, no doubt; but at present, I fear, I must say I am at sea again."

"Yes?"

"You compelled me to face the old problems once more, to re-examine the evidence."

"I compelled you?"

"Unwittingly, no doubt. You remember our talks when I was hors de combat. The fragments of poetry you read to me, the books you lent?"

"Well?"

"I found myself fighting the old battles over again. Before I was aware, I was in the thick of the strife."

"And you are fighting still?"

"Yes, I am fighting still."

"With your face toward your ultima Thule?"

"I cannot say that."

"What is your desire, then?"

"To find the truth. Perhaps I shall never succeed, but I shall try."

"You should come to church, which is the repository of truth, our vicar says."

He smiled a little wistfully, and shook his head. "At present I am making a fresh study of what Jesus said—or what He is reported to have said."

"Then that is all the greater reason why you should come to church."

He smiled again, and shook his head once more. "I do not think so," he answered.

"You do not?"

"No, the contrast is too sharp and startling."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I hardly like to discuss the matter at present," he said, diffidently; "I do not know sufficiently well where I am. Only I am conscious of this, that while Jesus wins my assent, the Church does the opposite."

"That is because of your upbringing."

"I do not think so. I have stood apart from all creeds and from all sects. At present I am a humble searcher after truth. I want some great principle to guide me. Some philosophy of life that shall appeal to the best that is in me."

"Well?"

"I turn to the Church, and I find a great bishop addressing such questions as these to his clergy: 'What ecclesiastical dress do you wear when celebrating the Holy Communion? Do you ever use any ceremony such as the Lavabo, or swinging of the incense immediately before or after the service? Do you have cards on the holy table? If so what do they contain? Do you ever read the first of the three longer exhortations? Do you ever have celebrations without communicants?' with a dozen other questions—to me—equally trivial and unimportant."

"To the bishop such questions would not be trivial at all, but vastly important."

He smiled a little sadly. "Isn't that the pity of it," he said, "that trifles are treated as though they were matters of life and death? I notice that a neighbouring vicar has even closed the church because women go into it with their heads uncovered."

"I admit that that seems straining at a gnat."

"But he does not think so. He is evidently righteously indignant, complains of the house of God being desecrated, because people go into it without some piece of millinery on their heads. One wonders whether it is a woman's hair or her head that is the offence."

"I think it is rather insulting to women, of course," she answered, with a laugh. "But he is only one, and nobody need mind very much."

"But how do these things help me? Think of the men who are wrestling with the great problems of life, who are fighting temptation and bad habits, who are groping in the darkness, and crying for the light, and the Church meets them with petty discussions about Lavabos and stoles and chasubles and incense, and hats off or on in church?"

"But are they not parts of religion?"

"I do not know. If they are, it is not to be surprised at that religion gets water-logged."

"But such things may be helpful to some people."

"In which way?"

"Oh, I don't know! But some day you will see things differently, perhaps."

"Perhaps so. I see some things differently already."

"Then you are not an infidel?"

"You can call me by any name you like. I do not mind so long as you understand me, and I have your sympathy."

"My sympathy, I fear, can be of no help to you."

"It will help me more than you can understand."

"I am so glad we have had this long talk together," she said, brightly. "I shall know what to think now when I hear people calling you names. But here we are close to the lodge gates."

She held out her hand to him, and the light from the lodge window fell full upon them. He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment.

Then suddenly from out the shadow of the lodge Gervase appeared, and stood stock still before them.