It was late in the afternoon of the day following the events just described. Mrs. Fringe was passing in and out of Clavering’s sitting-room making the removal of his tea an opportunity for interminable discourse.

“They say Eliza Wotnot’s had a bad week of it with one thing and another. They say she be as yellow as a lemon-pip in her body, as you might call it, and grey as ash-heaps in her old face. I never cared for the woman myself, and I don’t gather as she was desperate liked in the village, but a Christian’s a Christian when they be laid low in the Lord’s pleasure, though they be as surly-tongued as Satan.”

“I know, I know,” said the clergyman impatiently.

“They say Mr. Taxater sits up with her night after night as if he was a trained nurse. Why he don’t have a nurse I can’t think, ’cept it be some papist practice. The poor gentleman will be getting woeful thin, if this goes on. He’s not one for losing his sleep and his regular meals.”

“Sally Birch is doing all that for him, Mrs. Fringe,” said Clavering. “I have seen to it myself.”

“Sally Birch knows as much about cooking a gentleman’s meals as my Lottie, and that’s not saying a great deal.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Fringe, thank you,” said Clavering. “You need not move the table.”

“Oh, of course, ’tis Miss Gladys’ lesson-day. They say she’s given young Mr. Ilminster the go-by, sir. ’Tis strange and wonderful how some people be made by the holy Lord to have their whole blessed pleasure in this world. Providence do love the ones as loves themselves, and those that seeks what they want shall find it! I expect, between ourselves, sir, the young lady have got someone else in her eye. They tell me some great thundering swell from London is staying in the House.”

“That’ll do, Mrs. Fringe, that’ll do. You can leave those flowers a little longer.”

“I ought to let you know, sir, that old Jimmy Pringle has gone off wandering again. I saw Witch-Bessie at his door when I went to the shop this morning and she told me he was talking and talking, as badly as ever he did. Far gone, poor old sinner, Witch-Bessie said he was.”

“He is a religious minded man, I believe, at bottom,” said the clergyman.

“He be stark mad, sir, if that’s what you mean! As to the rest, they say his carryings on with that harlotry down in Yeoborough was a disgrace to a Christian country.”

“I know,” said Clavering, “I know, but we all have our temptations, Mrs. Fringe.”

“Temptations, sir?” and the sandy complexioned female snorted with contempt. “And is those as takes no drop of liquor, and looks at no man edge-ways, though their own lawful partner be a stiff corpse of seven years’ burying, to be put in the same class with them as goes rampaging with harlotries?”

“He has repented, Mrs. Fringe, he has repented. He told me so himself when I met him last week.”

“Repented!” groaned the indignant woman; “he repents well who repents when he can’t sin no more. His talk, if you ask me, sir, is more scandalous than religious. Witch-Bessie told me she heard him say that he had seen the Lord Himself. I am not a learned scholar like you, sir, but I know this, that when the Lord does go about the earth he doesn’t visit hoary old villains like Jimmy Pringle—except to tell them they be damned.”

“Did he really say that?” asked the clergyman, feeling a growing interest in Mr. Pringle’s revelations.

“Yes, sir, he did, sir! Said he met God,—those were his very words, and indecent enough words I call them!—out along by Captain Whiffley’s drive-gate. You should have heard Witch-Bessie tell me. He frightened her, he did, the wicked old man! God, he said, came to him, as I might come to you, sir, quite ordinary and familiar-like. ‘Jimmy,’ said God, all sudden, as if he were a person passing the time of day, ‘I have come to see you, Jimmy.’

“‘And who may you be, Mister?’ said the wicked old man, just as though the Lord above were a casual decent-dressed gentleman.

“‘I am God, Jimmy,’ said the Vision. ‘And I be come to tell ’ee how dearly I loves ’ee, spite of Satan and all his works.’ Witch-Bessie told me,” Mrs. Fringe continued, “how as the old man said things to her as she never thought to hear from human lips, so dreadful they were.”

“And what happened then?” asked Clavering eagerly.

“What happened then? Why God went away, he said, in a great cloud of roaring fire, and he was left alone, all dazed-like. Did you ever hear such a scimble-scamble story in your life, sir? And all by Captain Whiffley’s drive-gate!”

“Well, Mrs. Fringe,” said the clergyman, “I think we must postpone the rest of this interesting conversation till supper-time. I have several things I want to do.”

“I know you have, sir, I know you have. It isn’t easy to find out from all them books ways and means of keeping young ladies like Miss Gladys in the path of salvation. How does she get on, sir, if I might be so bold? I fear she don’t learn her catechism as quiet and patient as I used to learn mine, under old Mr. Ravelin, God forgive him!”

“Oh, I think Miss Romer is quite as good a pupil as you used to be, Mrs. Fringe,” said Clavering, rising and gently ushering her out of the door.

“She’s as good as some of these new-fangled village hussies, anyway,” retorted the irrepressible lady, turning on the threshold. “They tell me that Lucy Vare was off again last night with that rascally Tom Mooring. She’ll be in trouble, that young girl, before she wants to be.”

“I know, I know,” sighed the clergyman sadly, fumbling with the door handle.

“You don’t know all you ought to know, sir, if you’ll pardon my boldness,” returned the woman, making a step backwards.

“I know, because I saw them!” shouted Clavering, closing the door with irritable violence.

“Goodness me!” muttered Mrs. Fringe, returning to her kitchen, “if the poor young man knew what this parish was really like, he wouldn’t talk so freely about ‘seeing’ people!”

Left to himself, Clavering moved uneasily round his room, taking down first one book and then another, and looking anxiously at his shelves as if seeking something from them more efficient than eloquent words.

“As soon as she comes,” he said to himself, “I shall take her across to the church.”

He had not long to wait. The door at the end of the garden-path clicked. Light-tripping steps followed, and Gladys Romer’s well-known figure made itself visible through the open window. He hastened out to meet her, hoping to forestall the hospitable Mrs. Fringe. In this, however, he was unsuccessful. His housekeeper was already in the porch, taking from the girl her parasol and gloves. How these little things, these chance-thrown little things, always intervene between our good resolutions and their accomplishment! He ought to have been ready in his garden, on the watch for her. Surely he had not intentionally remained in his room? No, it was the fault of Mrs. Fringe; of Mrs. Fringe and her stories about Jimmy Pringle and God. He wished that “a roaring cloud of fire” would rise between him and this voluptuous temptress. But probably, priest though he was, he lacked the faith of that ancient reprobate. He stood aside to let her enter. The words “I think it would be better if we went over to the church,” stuck, unuttered, to the roof of his mouth. She held out her white ungloved hand, and then, as soon as the door was closed, began very deliberately removing her hat.

He stood before her smiling, that rather inept smile, which indicates the complete paralysis of every faculty, except the faculty of admiration. He could hardly now suggest a move to the church. He could not trouble her to re-assume that charming hat. Besides, what reason could he give? He did, however, give a somewhat ambiguous reason for following out Vennie’s heroic plan on another—a different—occasion. In the tone we use when allaying the pricks of conscience by tacitly treating that sacred monitor as if its intelligence were of an inferior order: “One of these days,” he said, “we must have our lesson in the church. It would be so nice and cool there, wouldn’t it?”

There was a scent of burning weeds in the front-room of the old Vicarage, when master and neophyte sat down together, at the round oak table, before the extended works of Pusey and Newman. Sombre were the bindings of these repositories of orthodoxy, but the pleasant afternoon sun streamed wantonly over them and illumined their gloom.

Gladys had seated herself so that the light fell caressingly upon her yellow hair and deepened into exquisite attractiveness the soft shadows of her throat and neck. Her arms were sleeveless; and as she leaned them against the table, their whiteness and roundness were enhanced by the warm glow.

The priest spoke in a low monotonous voice, explaining doctrines, elucidating mysteries, and emphasizing moral lessons. He spoke of baptism. He described the manner in which the Church had appropriated to her own purpose so many ancient pagan customs. He showed how the immemorial heathen usages of “immersion” and “ablution” had become, in her hands, wonderful and suggestive symbols of the purifying power of the nobler elements. He used words that he had come, by frequent repetition, to know by heart. In order that he might point out to her passages in his authors which lent themselves to the subject, he brought his chair round to her side.

The sound of her gentle breathing, and the terrible attraction of her whole figure, as she leant forward, in sweet girlish attention to what he was saying, maddened the poor priest.

In her secret heart Gladys hardly understood a single word. The phrase “immersion,” whenever it occurred, gave her an irresistible desire to laugh. She could not help thinking of her favourite round pond. The pond set her thinking of Lacrima and how amusing it was to frighten her. But this lesson with the young clergyman was even more amusing. She felt instinctively that it was upon herself his attention rested, whatever mysterious words might pass his lips.

Once, as they were leaning together over the “Development of Christian Doctrine,” and he was enlarging upon the gradual evolution of one sacred implication after another, she let her arm slide lightly over the back of his hand; and a savage thrill of triumph rose in her heart, as she felt an answering magnetic shiver run through his whole frame.

“The worship of the Body of our Saviour,” he said—using his own words as a shield against her—“allows no subterfuges, no reserves. It gathers to itself, as it sweeps down the ages, every emotion, every ardour, every passion of man. It appropriates all that is noble in these things to its own high purpose, and it makes even of the evil in them a means to yet more subtle good.”

As he spoke, with an imperceptible gesture of liberation he rose from his seat by her side and set himself to pace the room. The struggle he was making caused his fingers to clench and re-clench themselves in the palms of his hands, as though he were squeezing the perfume from handfuls of scented leaves.

The high-spirited girl knew by instinct the suffering she was causing, but she did not yield to any ridiculous pity. She only felt the necessity of holding him yet more firmly. So she too rose from her chair, and, slipping softly to the window, seated herself sideways upon its ledge. Balanced charmingly here—like some wood-nymph stolen from the forest to tease the solitude of some luckless hermit—she stretched one arm out of the window, and pulling towards her a delicate branch of yellow roses, pressed it against her breast.

The pose of her figure, as she balanced herself thus, was one of provoking attractiveness, and with a furtive look of feline patience in her half-shut eyes she waited while it threw its spell over him.

The scent of burning weeds floated into the room. Clavering’s thoughts whirled to and fro in his head like whipped chaff. “I must go on speaking,” he thought; “and I must not look at her. If I look at her I am lost.” He paced the room like a caged animal. His soul cried out within him to be liberated from the body of this death. He thought of the strange tombstone of Gideon Andersen, and wished he too were buried under it, and free forever!

“Yet is it not my duty to look at her?” the devil in his heart whispered. “How can I teach her, how can I influence her for good, if I do not see the effect of my words? Is it not an insult to the Master Himself, and His Divine power, to be thus cowardly and afraid?”

His steps faltered and he leant against the table.

“Christ,” he found his lips repeating, “is the explanation of all mysteries. He is the secret root of all natural impulses in us. All emerge from Him and all return to Him. He is to us what their ancient god Pan was to the Greeks. He is in a true sense our All—for in him is all we are, all we have, and all we hope. All our passions are His. Touched by Him, their true originator, they lose their dross, are purged of their evil, and give forth sweet-smelling, sweet-breathing—yellow roses!”

He had not intended to say “yellow roses.” The sentence had rounded itself off so, apart from his conscious will.

The girl gravely indicated that she heard him; and then smiled dreamily, acquiescingly—the sort of smile that yields to a spiritual idea, as if it were a physical caress.

The scent of burning weeds continued to float in through the window. “Oh, it has gone!” she cried suddenly, as, released from her fingers, the branch swung back to its place against the sandstone wall.

“I must have it again,” she added, bending her supple body backwards. She made one or two ineffectual efforts and then gave up, panting. “I can’t reach it,” she said. “But go on, Mr. Clavering. I can listen to you like this. It is so nice out here.”

Strange unfathomable thoughts surged up in the depths of Clavering’s soul. He found himself wishing that he had authority over her, that he might tame her wilful spirit, and lay her under the yoke of some austere penance. Why was she free to provoke him thus, with her merciless fragility? The madness she was arousing grew steadily upon him. He stumbled awkwardly round the edge of the table and approached her. The scent of burning weeds became yet more emphatic. To make his nearness to her less obvious, and out of a queer mechanical instinct to allay his own conscience, he continued his spiritual admonitions, even when he was quite close—even when he could have touched her with his hand. And it would be so easy to touch her! The playful perilousness of her position in the window made such a movement natural, justifiable, almost conventional.

“The true doctrine of the Incarnation,” his lips repeated, “is not that something contrary to nature has happened; it is that the innermost secret of Nature has been revealed. And this secret,”—here his fingers closed feverishly on the casement-latch—“is identical with the force that swings the furthest star, and drives the sap through the veins of all living things.”

It would have been of considerable interest to a student of religious psychology—like Mr. Taxater for example—to observe how the phrases that mechanically passed Clavering’s lips at this juncture were all phrases drawn from the works of rationalistic modernists. He had recently been reading the charming and subtle essays of Father Mervyn; and the soft and melodious harmonies of that clever theologian’s thought had accumulated in some hidden corner of his brain. The authentic religious emotion in him being superseded by a more powerful impulse, his mind mechanically reverted to the large, dim regions of mystical speculation. A certain instinct in him—the instinct of his clamorous senses—made him careful to blur, confuse, and keep far back, that lovely and terrible “Power from Outside,” the hem of Whose garments he had clung to, the night before. “Christ,” he went on, “is, as it were, the centre and pivot of the whole universe, and every revelation granted to us of His nature is a revelation from the system of things itself. I want you to understand that our true attitude towards this great mystery, ought to be the attitude of scientific explorers, who in searching for hidden causes have come upon the one, the unique Cause.”

The girl’s only indication that she embraced the significance of these solemn words was to make a sudden gliding serpentine movement which brought her into a position more easy to be retained, and yet one that made it still more unnatural that he should refuse her some kind of playful and affectionate support.

The poor priest’s heart beat tumultuously. He began to lose all consciousness of everything except his propinquity to his provoker. He was aware with appalling distinctness of the precise texture of the light frock that she wore. It was of a soft fawn colour, crossed by wavy lines of a darker tint. He watched the way these wavy lines followed the curves of her figure. They began at her side, and ended where her skirt hung loose over her little swinging ankles. He wished these lines had sloped upwards, instead of downwards; then it would have been so much easier for him to follow the argument of the “Development of Christian Doctrine.”

Still that scent of burning weeds! Why must his neighbours set fire to their rubbish, on this particular afternoon?

With a fierce mental effort he tried to suppress the thought that those voluptuous lips only waited for him to overcome his ridiculous scruples. Why must she wait like this so pitilessly passive, laying all the burden of the struggle upon him? If she would only make a little—a very little—movement, his conscience would be able to recover its equilibrium, whatever happened. He tried to unmagnetize her attraction, by visualizing the fact that under this desirable form—so near his touch—lurked nothing but that bleak, bare, last outline of mortality, to which all flesh must come. He tried to see her forehead, her closed eyes, her parted lips, as they would look if resting in a coffin. Like his monkish predecessors in the world-old struggle against Satan, he sought to save himself by clutching fast to the grinning skull.

All this while his lips went on repeating their liturgical formula. “We must learn to look upon the Redemption, as a natural, not a supernatural fact. We must learn to see in it the motive-force of the whole stream of evolution. We must remember that things are what they have it in them to become. It is the purpose, the end, which is the true truth—not the process or the method. Christ is the end of all things. He is therefore the beginning of all things. All things find their meaning, their place, their explanation, only in relation to Him. He is the reality of the illusion which we call Nature, and of the illusion which we call Life. In Him the universe becomes real and living—which else were a mere engine of destruction.” How much longer he would have continued in this strain—conquered yet still resisting—it were impossible to say. All these noble words, into the rhythm of which so much passionate modern thought had been poured, fell from his lips like sand out of a sieve.

The girl herself interrupted him. With a quick movement she suddenly jerked herself from her recumbent position; jumped, without his help, lightly down upon the floor, and resumed her former place at the table. The explanation of this virtuous retreat soon made itself known in the person of a visitor advancing up the garden. Clavering, who had stumbled foolishly aside as she changed her place, now opened the door and went to meet the new-comer.

It was Romer’s manager, Mr. Thomas Lickwit, discreet, obsequious, fawning, as ever,—but with a covert malignity in his hurried words. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. I see it is Miss Gladys’ lesson. I hope the young lady is getting on nicely, sir. I won’t detain you for more than a moment. I have just a little matter that couldn’t wait. Business is business, you know.”

Clavering felt as though he had heard this last observation repeated “ad nauseam” by all the disgusting sycophants in all the sensational novels he had ever read. It occurred to him how closely Mr. Lickwit really did resemble all these monotonously unpleasant people.

“Yes,” went on the amiable man, “business is business—even with reverend gentlemen like yourself who have better things to attend to.” Clavering forced himself to smile in genial appreciation of this airy wit, and beckoned the manager into his study. He then returned to the front room. “I am afraid our lesson must end for tonight, Miss Romer,” he said. “You know enough of this lieutenant of your father’s to guess that he will not be easy to get rid of. The worst of a parson’s life are these interruptions.”

There was no smile upon his face as he said this, but the girl laughed merrily. She adjusted her hat with a deliciously coquettish glance at him through the permissible medium of the gilt-framed mirror. Then she turned and held out her hand. “Till next week, then, Mr. Clavering. And I will read all those books you sent up for me—even the great big black one!”

He gravely opened the door for her, and with a sigh from a heart “sorely charged,” returned to face Mr. Lickwit.

He found that gentleman comfortably ensconced in the only arm-chair. “It is like this, sir,” said the man, when Clavering had taken a seat opposite him. “Mr. Romer thinks it would be a good thing if this Social Meeting were put a stop to. There has been talk, sir. I will not conceal it from you. There has been talk. The people say that you have allied yourself with that troublesome agitator. You know the man I refer to, sir, that wretched Wone.

“Mr. Romer doesn’t approve of what he hears of these meetings. He doesn’t see as how they serve any good purpose. He thinks they promote discord in the place, and set one class against another. He does not like the way, neither, that Mr. Quincunx has been going on down there; nor to say the truth, sir, do I like that gentleman’s doings very well. He speaks too free, does Mr. Quincunx, much too free, considering how he is situated as you might say.”

Clavering leapt to his feet, trembling with anger. “I cannot understand this,” he said, “Someone has been misleading Mr. Romer. The Social Meeting is an old institution of this village; and though it is not exactly a church affair, I believe it is almost entirely frequented by church-goers. I have always felt that it served an invaluable purpose in this place. It is indeed the only occasion when priest and people can meet on equal terms and discuss these great questions man to man. No—no, Lickwit, I cannot for a moment consent to the closing of the Social Meeting. It would undo the work of years. It would be utterly unwise. In fact it would be wrong. I cannot think how you can come to me with such a proposal.”

Mr. Lickwit made no movement beyond causing his hat to twirl round on the top of the stick he held between his knees.

“You will think better of it, sir. You will think better of it,” he said. “The election is coming on, and Mr. Romer expects all supporters of Church and State to help him in his campaign. You have heard he is standing, sir, I suppose?”

Mr. Lickwit uttered the word “standing” in a tone which suggested to Clavering’s mind a grotesque image of the British Constitution resting like an enormous cornucopia on the head of the owner of Leo’s Hill. He nodded and resumed his seat. The manager continued. “That old Methodist chapel where those meetings are held, belongs, as you know, to Mr. Romer. He is thinking of having it pulled down—not only because of Wone’s and Quincunx’s goings on there, but because he wants the ground. He’s thinking of building an estate-office on that corner. We are pressed for room, up at the Hill, sir.”

Once more Clavering rose to his feet. “This is too much!” he cried. “I wonder you have the impertinence to come here and tell me such things. I am not to be bullied, Lickwit. Understand that! I am not to be bullied.”

“Then I may tell the master,” said the man sneeringly, rising in his turn and making for the door, “that Mr. Parson won’t have nothing to do with our little plan?”

“You may tell him what you please, Lickwit. I shall go over myself at once to the House and see Mr. Romer.” He glanced at his watch. “It is not seven yet, and I know he does not dine till eight.”

“By all means, sir, by all means! He’ll be extremely glad to see you. You couldn’t do better, sir. You’ll excuse me if I don’t walk up with you. I have to run across and speak to Mr. Goring.”

He bowed himself out and hurried off. Clavering seized his hat and followed him, turning, however, when once in the street, in the direction of the south drive. It took him scarcely a couple of minutes to reach the village square where the drive emerged. In the centre of the square stood a solid erection of Leonian stone adapted to the double purpose of a horse-trough and a drinking fountain. Here the girls came to draw water, and here the lads came to chat and flirt with the girls. Mr. Clavering could not help pausing in his determined march to watch a group of young people engaged in animated and laughing frivolity at this spot. It was a man and two girls. He recognized the man at once by his slight figure and lively gestures. It was Luke Andersen. “That fellow has a bad influence in this place,” he said to himself. “He takes advantage of his superior education to unsettle these children’s minds. I must stop this.” He moved slowly towards the fountain. Luke Andersen looked indeed as reckless and engaging as a young faun out of a heathen story. He was making a cup of his two hands and whimsically holding up the water to the lips of the younger of his companions, while the other one giggled and fluttered round them. Had the priest been in a poetic humour at that moment, he might have been reminded of those queer mediÆval legends of the wanderings of the old dispossessed divinities. The young stone-carver, with his classic profile and fair curly hair, might have passed for a disguised Dionysus seducing to his perilous service the women of some rustic Thessalian hamlet. No pleasing image of this kind crossed Hugh Clavering’s vision. All he saw, as he approached the fountain, was another youthful incarnation of the dangerous Power he had been wrestling with all the afternoon. He advanced towards the engaging Luke, much as Christian might have advanced towards Apollyon. “Good evening, Andersen,” he said, with a certain professional severity. “Using the fountain, I see? We must be careful, though, not to waste the water this hot summer.”

The girl who was drinking rose up with a little start, and stood blushing and embarrassed. Luke appeared entirely at his ease. He leant negligently against the edge of the stone trough, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. In this particular pose he resembled to an extraordinary degree the famous Capitolian statue.

“It is hardly wasting the water, Mr. Clavering,” he said with a smile, “offering it to a beautiful mouth. Why don’t you curtsey to Mr. Clavering, Annie? I thought all you girls curtsied when clergymen spoke to you.”

The priest frowned. The audacious aplomb of the young man unnerved and disconcerted him.

“Water in a stone fountain like this,” went on the shameless youth, “has a peculiar charm these hot evenings. It makes you almost fancy you are in Seville. Seville is a place in Spain, Annie. Mr. Clavering will tell you all about it.”

“I think Annie had better run in to her mother now,” said the priest severely.

“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the youth with unruffled urbanity. “Her mother has gone shopping in Yeoborough and I have to see that Annie behaves properly till she comes back.”

Clavering looked reproachfully at the girl. Something about him—his very inability perhaps to cope with this seductive Dionysus—struck her simple intelligence as pathetic. She made a movement as if to join her companion, who remained roguishly giggling a few paces off. But Luke boldly restrained her. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said laughingly to the priest, “She will be a heart-breaker one of these days, Mr. Clavering, will our Annie here! You wouldn’t think she was eighteen, would you, sir?”

Under other circumstances the young clergyman would have unhesitatingly commanded the girl to go home. But his recent experiences had loosened the fibre of his moral courage. Besides, what was there to prevent this incorrigible young man from walking off after her? One could hardly—at least in Protestant England—make one’s flock moral by sheer force.

“Well—good-night to you all,” he said, and moved away, thinking to himself that at any rate there was safety in publicity. “But what a dangerous person that Andersen is! One never knows how to deal with these half-and-half people. If he were a village-boy it would be different. And it would be different if he were a gentleman. But he is neither one thing or the other. Seville! Who would have thought to have heard Seville referred to, in the middle of Nevilton Square?”

He reached the carved entrance of the House with its deeply-cut armorial bearings—the Seldom falcon with the arrow in its beak. “No more will that bird fly,” he thought, as he waited for the door to open.

He was ushered into the spacious entrance hall, the usual place of reception for Mr. Romer’s less favoured guests. The quarry-owner was alone. He shook hands affably with his visitor and motioned him to a seat.

“I have come about that question of the Social Meeting—” he began.

Mr. Romer cut him short. “It is no longer a question,” he said. “It is a ‘fait accompli.’ I have given orders to have the place pulled down next week. I want the space for building purposes.”

Clavering turned white with anger. “We shall have to find another room then,” he said. “I cannot have those meetings dropping out from our village life. They keep the thoughtful people together as nothing else can.”

Mr. Romer smiled grimly. “You will find it difficult to discover another place,” he remarked.

“Then I shall have them in my own house,” said the vicar of Nevilton.

Mr. Romer crossed his hands and threw back his head; looking, with the air of one who watches the development of precisely foreseen events, straight into the sad eyes of the little Royal Servant on the wall.

“Pardon such a question, my friend,” said he, “but may I ask you what your personal income is, at this moment?”

“You know that well enough,” returned the other. “I have nothing beyond the hundred and fifty pounds I receive as vicar of this place.”

“And what,” pursued the Quarry-owner, “may your expenditure amount to?”

“That, also, you know well,” replied Clavering. “I give away about eighty pounds, every year, to the poor of this village.”

“And where does this eighty pounds come from?” went on the Squire. The priest was silent.

“I will tell you where it comes from,” pronounced the other. “It comes from me. It is my contribution, out of the tithes which I receive as lay-rector. And it is the larger part of them.”

The priest was still silent.

“When I first came here,” his interlocutor continued, “I gave up these tithes as an offering to our village necessities; and I have not yet withdrawn them. If this Social Meeting, Mr. Clavering, is not brought to an end, I shall withdraw them. And no one will be able to blame me.”

Hugh jumped up on his feet with a gesture of fury. “I call this,” he shouted, “nothing short of sacrilege! Yes, sacrilege and tyranny! I shall proclaim it abroad. I shall write to the papers. I shall appeal to the bishop—to the country!”

“As you please,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “as you please. I should only like to point out that any action of this kind will tie up my purse-strings forever. You will not be popular with your flock, my friend. I know something of our dear Nevilton people; and I shall have only to make it plain to them that it is their vicar who has reduced this charity; and you will not find yourself greatly loved!”

Clavering fell back into his chair with a groan. He knew too well the truth of the man’s words. He knew also the straits into which this lack of money would plunge half his benevolent activities in the parish. He hung his head gloomily and stared at the floor. What would he not have given, at that moment, to have been able to meet this despot, man to man, unencumbered by his duty to his people!

“Let me assure you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “that you are not by any means fighting the cause of your church, in supporting this wretched Meeting. If I were bidding you interrupt your services or your sacraments, it would be another matter. This Social Meeting has strong anti-clerical prejudices. You know that, as well as I. It is conducted entirely on nonconformist lines. I happen to be aware,” he added, “since you talk of appealing to the bishop, that the good man has already, on more than one occasion, protested vigorously against the association of his clergy with this kind of organization. I do not know whether you ever glance at that excellent paper the Guardian; but if so you will find, in this last week’s issue, a very interesting case, quite parallel to ours, in which the bishop’s sympathies were by no means on the side you are advocating.”

The young priest rose and bowed. “There is, at any rate, no necessity for me to trouble you any further,” he said. “So I will bid you good-night.”

He left the hall hastily, picked up his hat, and let himself out, before his host had time to reply. All the way down the drive his thoughts reverted to the seductive wiles of this despot’s daughter. “The saints are deserting me,” he thought, “by reason of my sin.”

He was not, even then, destined to escape his temptress. Gladys, who doubtless had been expecting this sudden retreat, emerged from the shadow of the trees and intercepted him. “I will walk to the gate with you,” she said. The power of feminine attraction is never more insidious than at the moment of bitter remorse. The mind reverts so easily, so willingly, then, back to the dangerous way. The mere fact of its having lost its pride of resistance, its vanity of virtue, makes it yield to a new assault with terrible facility. She drew him into the dusky twilight of the scented exotic cedars which bordered the way, on the excuse of inhaling their fragrance more closely.

She made him pull down a great perfumed cypress-bough, of some unusual species, so that they might press their faces against it. They stood so closely together that she could feel through her thin evening-gown the furious trembling that seized him. She knew that he had completely lost his self-control, and was quite at her mercy. But Gladys had not the least intention of yielding herself to the emotion she had excited. What she intended was that he should desire her to desperation, not that, by the least touch, his desire should be gratified. In another half-second, as she well knew, the poor priest would have seized her in his arms. In place of permitting this, what she did was to imprint a fleeting kiss with her warm lips upon the back of his hand, and then to leap out of danger with a ringing laugh. “Good-bye!” she called back at him, as she ran off. “I’ll come in good time next week.”

It may be imagined in what a turbulence of miserable feelings Hugh Clavering repassed the village square. He glanced quickly at the fountain. Yes! Luke Andersen was still loitering in the same place, and the little bursts of suppressed screams and laughter, and the little fluttering struggles, of the group around him, indicated that he was still, in his manner, corrupting the maidens of Nevilton. The priest longed to put his hands to his ears and run down the street, even as Christian ran from the city of Destruction. What was this power—this invincible, all-pervasive power—against which he had committed himself to contend? He felt as though he were trying, with his poor human strength, to hold back the sea-tide, so that it should not cover the sands.

Could it be that, after all, the whole theory of the church was wrong, and that the great Life-Force was against her, and punishing her, for seeking, with her vain superstitions, to alter the stars in their courses?

Could it be that this fierce pleasure-lust, which he felt so fatally in Gladys, and saw in Luke, and was seduced by in his own veins, was after all the true secret of Nature, and, to contend against it, madness and impossible folly? Was he, and not they, the really morbid and infatuated one—morbid with the arbitrary pride of a desperate tradition of perverted heroic souls? He moved along the pavement under the church wall and looked up at its grand immovable tower. “Are you, too,” he thought, “but the symbol of an insane caprice in the mad human race, seeking, in fond recklessness, to alter the basic laws of the great World?”

The casuistical philosophy of Mr. Taxater returned to his mind. What would the papal apologist say to him now, thus torn and tugged at by all the forces of hell? He felt a curious doubt in his heart as to the side on which, in this mad struggle, the astute theologian really stood. Perhaps, for all his learning, the man was no more Christian in his true soul, than had been many of those historic popes whose office he defended. In his desperate mood Clavering longed to get as near as possible to the altar of this God of his, who thus bade him confront the whole power of nature and all the wisdom of the world. He looked up and down the street. Two men were talking outside The Goat and Boy, but their backs were turned. With a quick sudden movement he put his hands on the top of the wall and scrambled hastily over, scraping his shins as he did so on a sharp stone at the top. He moved rapidly to the place where rose the strange tombstone designed by the atheist carver. It was here that Vennie and he had entered into their heroic covenant only twenty-four hours before. He looked at the enormous skull so powerfully carved and at the encircled cross beneath it. He laid his hand upon the skull, precisely as he had done the night before; only this time there were no little cold fingers to instil pure devotion into him. Instead of the touch of such fingers he felt the burning contact of Gladys’ soft lips.

No! it was an impossible task that his God had laid upon him. Why not give up the struggle? Why not throw over this mad idol of purity he had raised for his worship, and yield himself to the great stream? The blood rushed to his head with the alluring images that this thought evoked. Perhaps, after all, Gladys would marry him, and then—why, then, he could revert to the humourous wisdom of Mr. Taxater, and cultivate the sweet mystical speculations of modernism; reconciling, pleasantly and easily, the natural pleasures of the senses, with the natural exigencies of the soul!

He left Gideon’s grave and walked back to the church-porch. It was now nearly dark and without fear of being observed by any one through the iron bars of the outer gate, he entered the porch and stood before the closed door. He wished he had brought the key with him. How he longed, at that moment, to fling himself down before the altar and cry aloud to his God!

By his side stood the wheeled parish bier, ornamented by a gilt inscription, informing the casual intruder that it had been presented to the place in honour of the accession of King George the Fifth. There was not light enough to read these touching words, but the gilt plate containing them gave forth a faint scintillating glimmer.

Worn out by the day-long struggle in his heart, Clavering sat down upon this grim “memento mori”; and then, after a minute or two, finding that position uncomfortable, deliberately stretched himself out at full length upon the thing’s bare surface. Lying here, with the bats flitting in and out above his head, the struggle in his mind continued. Supposing he did yield,—not altogether, of course; his whole nature was against that, and his public position stood in the way,—but just a little, just a hair’s breadth, could he not enjoy a light playful flirtation with Gladys, such as she was so obviously prepared for, even if it were impossible to marry her? The worst of it was that his imagination so enlarged upon the pleasures of this “playful flirtation,” that it very quickly became an obsessing desire. He propped himself up upon his strange couch and looked forth into the night. The stars were just beginning to appear, and he could see one or two constellations whose names he knew. How indifferent they were, those far-off lights! What did it matter to them whether he yielded or did not yield? He had the curious sensation that the whole conflict in which he was entangled belonged to a terrestrial sphere infinitely below those heavenly luminaries. Not only the Power against which he contended, but the Power on whose side he fought, seemed out-distanced and derided by those calm watchers.

He sank back again and gazed up at the carved stone roof above him. A dull inert weariness stole over his brain; a sick disgust of the whole mad business of a man’s life upon earth. Why was he born into the world with passions that he must not satisfy and ideals that he could not hold? Better not to have been born at all; or, being born, better to lie quiet and untroubled, with all these placid churchyard people, under the heavy clay! The mental weariness that assailed him gradually changed into sheer physical drowsiness. His head sought instinctively a more easy position and soon found what it sought. His eyes closed; and there, upon the parish bier, worn out with his struggle against Apollyon, the vicar of Nevilton slept. When he returned to consciousness he found himself cramped, cold and miserable. Hurriedly he scrambled to his feet, stretched his stiff limbs and listened. The clock in the Tower above him began to strike. It struck one—two—and then stopped. He had slept for nearly five hours.