"She had reason to know it was one of us—and if I had denied it was I—"

"I see—why didn't you?"

"I thought she must surely have seen me—and besides"—his voice softened with affection—"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a misunderstanding like that on to your shoulders. Thank God, I am not yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own blameless acts, even when they will be cruelly misconstrued."

"But you should have done so—It would mean nothing to me, and everything to you—to that poor girl—poor Nance—always so helpless and wondering and so pathetically ready to believe! She didn't deserve that you take it upon yourself, Allan!"

"No—no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, though I will say that few men of my—well, my attractions! Why not say it bluntly?—few men of my attractions, placed as I have been, would have made so few—but I shall never be found shirking their consequences—it is not in my nature, thank God, to let another bear the burden—I can always be a man!—"

"But, old boy—you must think of poor Nancy—not of me!" Again he felt the hurt of her suspicion.

"True—compassion requires that I think of her rather than of my own pride—and I have—but, you see, it's too late. I committed myself before I knew she didn't know!"

"Let her believe it is still a mistake—"

"No, no—it would be trickery—and it's impracticable—I as good as confessed to her, you see—unless"—he brightened here and stopped in his walk—"unless she could be made to believe that I meant to shield you!"

"That's it! Really, you are an executor, Allan! Now we'll put the poor girl easy in her mind again. I'll tell her you did it to shield me. You know it's important—what Nancy thinks of you, old chap—she's your wife—and—it doesn't matter a bit how meanly—she thinks of me—of course not. I dare say it will be better for me if she does think meanly of me—I'll tell her at once—what was it I did?"

"No—no—she wouldn't believe you now. I dislike to say this, Bernal, but Nancy is not always so trusting as a good woman should be—she has a habit of wondering—but—mind you, I could only consent to this for the sake of her peace of mind—"

"I understand perfectly, old chap—it will help the peace of mind of all of us, I begin to see—hers and mine—and yours."

"Well, then, if she can be made to suspect this other aspect of the affair without being told directly—ah!—here's a way. Turn that messenger-call. Now listen—I will have a note sent here addressed to you by a certain woman. It will be handed to Nancy to give to you. She will observe the writing—and she will recognise it,—she knows it. You will have been anxious about this note—expecting it—inquiring for it, you know. Get your dinner now, then stay in your room so the maid won't see you when the note comes—she will have to ask Nance where you are—"

At dinner, which Bernal had presently with Aunt Bell and two empty seats, his companion regaled him with comments upon the development of the religious instinct in mankind, reminding him that should he ever aspire to a cult of his own he would find Boston a more fertile field than New York.

"They're so much broader there, you know," she began. "Really, they'll believe anything if you manage your effects artistically. And that is the trouble with you, Bernal. You appeal too little to the imagination. You must not only have a novelty to preach nowadays, but you must preach it in a spectacular manner. Now, that assertion of yours that we are all equally selfish is novel and rather interesting—I've tried to think of some one's doing some act to make himself unhappy and I find I can't. And your suggestion of Judas Iscariot and Mr. Spencer as the sole inmates of hell is not without a certain piquancy. But, my dear boy, you need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a red robe, do healing—"

He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, Aunt Bell—I've learned that."

"But you could be, with proper managing. There's that perfectly stunning beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you make nothing of it—it might have happened to anybody and it never came to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent—any kind of accent would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your message, and I'd guarantee you a following of thousands in New York in a month. Of course they'd leave you for the next fellow that came along with a key to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, but you'd keep them a while."

Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of breath.

"I'll quit, Aunt Bell—that's enough—"

"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his hold on the masses with Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to the imagination. I'm told by those who have read his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and yet the President of Princeton Theological Seminary preaches a sermon in which he calls him 'the greatest failure of the age.' I read it in this morning's paper. His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.' You see, there was an appeal to the imagination—the most audacious appeal that the world has ever known—and the crowd will be with this clergyman who uses it to refute the arguments of a man who worked hard through forty years of ill-health to get at the mere dry common-sense of things. If Jesus had descended to logic, he'd never have made a convert. But he appealed magnificently to the imagination, and see the result!"

His mind had been dwelling on Allan's trouble, but now he came back to his gracious adviser.

"You do me good, Aunt Bell—you've taken all that message nonsense out of me. I suppose I could be one of them, you know—one of those fellows that get into trouble—if I saw it was needed; but it isn't. Let the men who can't help it do it—they have no choice. Hereafter I shall worry as little about the world's salvation as I do about my own."

When they had finished dinner he let it be known that he was not a little anxious concerning a message that was late in arriving, and he made it a point, indeed, that the maid should advise Mrs. Linford to this effect, with an inquiry whether she might not have seen the delayed missive.

Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south window smoked into the night—smoked into something approaching quietude a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in dusky white—the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into his so long ago—so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool, forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of idealism—forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously through barren years!

He knew that he had awakened too late for more than a fleeting vision of what would have made his life full. Now he must be off, up the path again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. The woman was definitely gone. That was something, even though she went with that absurd, unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one free, dear look from her to keep through the empty days.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE FELL FINGER OF CALUMNY SEEMS TO BE AGREEABLY DIVERTED

Shut in his study, the rector of St. Antipas paced the floor with nicely measured steps, or sat at his desk to make endless squares, circles, and triangles. He was engrossed in the latter diversion when he heard the bell sound below. He sat back to hear the steps of the maid, the opening of the door; then, after an interval, her steps ascending the stairs and stopping at his own door; then her knock.

"A letter for Mr. Bernal, sir!"

He glanced at the envelope she held, noting its tint.

"He's not here Nora. Take it to Mrs. Linford. She will know where he is."

He heard her go down the hall and knock at another door. She was compelled to knock twice, and then there was delay before the door opened.

He drew some pages of manuscript before him and affected to be busy at a work of revision, crossing out a word here, interlining one there, scanning the result with undivided attention.

When he heard a knock he did not look up, but said, "Come!" Though still intent at his work, he knew that Nancy stood there, looking from the letter to him.

"Nora said you sent this letter to me—it's for Bernal—"

He answered, still without looking up,

"I thought he might be with you, or that you might know where he was."

"I don't."

He knew that she studied the superscription of the envelope.

"Well, leave it here on my desk till he comes. I sent it to you only because I heard him inquiring if a letter had not come for him—he seemed rather anxious about some letter—troubled, in fact—doubtless some business affair. I hoped this might be what he was expecting."

His eyes were still on the page before him, and he crossed out a word and wrote another above it, after a meditative pause. Still the woman at the door hesitated.

"Did you chance to notice the address on the envelope?"

He glanced at her now for the first time, apparently in some surprise: "No—it is not my custom to study addresses of letters not my own. Nora said it was for Bernal and he had seemed really distressed about some letter or message that didn't come—if you will leave it here—"

"I wish to hand it to him myself."

"As you like." He returned to his work, crossing out a whole line and a half with broad, emphatic marks. Then he bent lower, and the interest in his page seemed to redouble, for he heard the door of Bernal's room open. Nancy called:

"Bernal!"

He came to the door where she stood and she stepped a little inside so that he might enter.

"I am anxious about a letter. Ah, you have it!"

She was scanning him with a look that was acid to eat out any untruth in his face.

"Yes—it just came." She held it out to him. He looked at the front of the envelope, then up to her half-shut eager eyes—eyes curiously hardened now—then he blushed flagrantly—a thorough, riotous blush—and reached for the letter with a pitiful confusion of manner, not again raising his uneasy eyes to hers.

"I was expecting—looking—for a message, you know—yes, yes—this is it—thank you very much, you know!"

He stammered, his confusion deepened. With the letter clutched eagerly in his hand he went out.

She looked after him, intently. When he had shut his own door she glanced over at the inattentive Allan, once more busy at his manuscript and apparently unconscious of her presence.

A long time she stood in silence, trying to moderate the beating of her heart. Once she turned as if to go, but caught herself and turned again to look at the bent head of Allan.

At last it seemed to her that she could trust herself to speak. Closing the door softly, she went to the big chair at the end of the desk. As she let herself go into this with a sudden joy in the strength of its supporting arms, her husband looked up at her inquiringly.

She did not speak, but returned his gaze; returned it, with such steadiness that presently he let his own eyes go down before hers with palpable confusion, as if fearing some secret might lie there plain to her view. His manner stimulated the suspicion under which she now seemed to labour.

"Allan, I must know something at once very clearly. It will make a mighty difference in your life and in mine."

"What is it you wish to know?" His glance was oblique and his manner one of discomfort, the embarrassed discomfort of a man who fears that the real truth—the truth he has generously striven to withhold—is at last to come out.

"That letter which Bernal was so troubled about came from—from that woman—how could I avoid seeing that when it was handed to me? Did you know it, too?"

"Why, Nancy—I knew—of course—I knew he expected—I mean the poor boy told me—" Here he broke off in the same pitiful confusion that had marked Bernal's manner at the door—the confusion of apprehended deceit. Then he began again, as if with gathered wits—"What was I saying? I know nothing whatever of Bernal's affairs or his letters. Really, how should I? You see, I have work on my mind." As if to cover his awkwardness, he seized his pen and hastily began to cross out a phrase on the page before him.

"Allan!" Though low, it was so near a cry that he looked up in what seemed to be alarm. She was leaning forward in the chair, one hand reaching toward him over the desk, and she spoke rapidly.

"Allan, I find myself suspecting now that you tried to deceive me this afternoon—that Bernal did, also, incredible as it sounds—that you tried to take the blame of that wretched thing off his shoulders. That letter to him indicates it, his own pitiful embarrassment just now—oh, an honest man wouldn't have looked as he did!—your own manner at this instant. You are both trying—Oh, tell me the truth now!—you'll never dream how badly I need it, what it means to my whole life—tell me, Allan—for God's sake be honest this instant—my poor head is whirling with all the lies! Let me feel there is truth somewhere. Listen. I swear I'll stay by it, wherever it takes me—here or away from here—but I must have it. Oh, Allan, if it should be in you, after all—Allan! dear, dear—Oh! I do see it now—you can't deceive—you can't deceive!"

Slowly at first his head bent under her words, bent in cowardly evasion of her sharp glance, the sidelong shiftings of his eyes portraying him, the generous liar, brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness. Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more insistent, the fine head was suddenly erected and proud confession was written plainly over the glowing face—that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear a brother's shame and failed from lack of genius in the devious ways of deceit.

Now he stood nobly from his chair and she was up with a little loving rush to his arms. Then, as he would have held her protectingly, she gently pushed away.

"Don't—don't take me yet, dear—I should be crying in another moment—I'm so—so beaten—and I want not to cry till I've told you, oh, so many things! Sit again and let us talk calmly first. Now why—why did you pretend this wretched thing?"

He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy dignity of a rugged man—and there was a loving quiet in his tones that touched her ineffably.

"Poor Bernal had told me his—his contretemps. The rest is simple. He is my brother. The last I remember of our mother is her straining me to her poor breast and saying, 'Oh, take care of little Bernal!'" Tears were glistening in his eyes.

"From the very freedom of the poor boy's talk about religious matters, it is the more urgent that his conduct be irreproachable. I could not bear that even you should think a shameful thing of him."

She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her tears in check through the very excitement of this splendid new admiration for him.

"But that was foolish—quixotic—"

"You will never know, little woman, what a brother's love is. Don't you remember years ago I told you that I would stand by Bernal, come what might. Did you think that was idle boasting?"

"But you were willing to have me suspect that of you!"

He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one might speak who had long suffered hurts in secret.

"Dearest—dear little woman—I already knew that I had been unable to retain your love—God knows I tried—but in some way I had proved unworthy of it. I had come to believe—painful and humiliating though that belief was—that you could not think less of me—your words to-night proved that I was right—you would have gone away, even without this. But at least my poor brother might still seem good to you."

"Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man—And yet, Allan, nothing less than this would have shown you truly to me. I can speak plainly now—indeed I must, for once. Allan, you have ways—mannerisms—that are unfortunate. They raised in me a conviction that you were not genuine—that you were somehow false. Don't let it hurt now, dear, for see—this one little unstudied, impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive with your generous heart, has revealed your true self to me as nothing else could have done. Oh, don't you see how you have given me at last what I had to have, if we were to live on together—something in you to hold to—a foundation to rest upon—something I can know in my heart of hearts is stable—despite any outward, traitorous seeming! Now forever I can be loving, and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at last are misleading."

Again and again she sought to envelope him with acceptable praises, while he gazed fondly at her from that justified pride in his own stanchness—murmuring, "Nance, you please me—you please me!"

"Don't you see, dear? I couldn't reach you before. You gave me nothing to believe in—not even God. That seeming lack of genuineness in you stifled my soul. I could no longer even want to be good—and all that for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you."

"No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, Nance—"

"Say unfortunate, Allan—not faulty. I shall never again believe a fault of you. How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments—and what stupids they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me believe in everything else—in God and goodness and virtue and truth—in all the good things we like to believe in—yet see what he did!"

"My dear, I know little of the circumstances, but—"

"It isn't that—I can't judge him in that—but this I must judge—Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was willing I should think it was you. To retain my respect he was willing to betray you." She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in pain. "You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to me all these years, and especially this last week. But now—poor weak Bernal! Poor Judas, indeed!" There was a kind of anguished bitterness in the last words.

"My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy," remonstrated Allan gently. "Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart—and he is my brother."

"Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you—Can't you see that is precisely what he lacks—a good heart? Oh, dearest, I needed this—to show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me. There were grave reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment."

There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door.

"It must be Bernal," he said—"he was to leave about this time."

"I can't see him again."

"Just this once, dear—for my sake! Come!"

Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet. With his hat he held a letter. Allan went forward to meet him. Nancy stood up to study the lines of an etching on the wall.

"I've come to say good-bye, you know." She heard the miserable embarrassment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure.

Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held.

"Good-bye—old chap—God bless you!"

He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about being sorry to go.

"And I don't want to preach, old chap," continued Allan, giving the hand a farewell grip, "but remember there are always two pairs of arms that will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to save us,—and my own poor arms, hardly less loving."

"Thank you, old boy—I'll go back to Hoover"—he looked hesitatingly at the profile of Nancy—"Hoover thinks it's all rather droll, you know—Good-bye, old boy! Good-bye, Nancy."

"My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye."

She turned and said "good-bye." He stepped toward her—seeming to her to slink as he walked—but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, cold, and unyielding. He went out, with a last awkward "Good-bye, old chap!" to Allan.

Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her hands to him. He had removed from its envelope the letter Bernal had left him, and seemed about to put it rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it playfully, not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain reluctance, her eyes upon his face.

"No more business to-night—we have to talk. Oh, I must tell you so much that has troubled me and made me doubt, my dear—and my poor mind has been up and down like a see-saw. I wonder it's not a wreck. Come, put away your business—there." She placed the letter and its envelope on the desk.

"Now sit here while I tell you things."

An hour they were there, lingering in talk—talking in a circle; for at regular intervals Nancy must return to this: "I believe no wife ever goes away until there is absolutely no shred of possibility left—no last bit of realness to hold her. But now I know your stanchness."

"Really, Nance—I can't tell you how much you please me."

There was a knock at the door. They looked at each other bewildered.

"The telephone, sir," said the maid in response to Allan's tardy "Come in."

When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked nervously about the room, studying familiar objects from out of her animated meditation.

Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed fondly over its litter of papers. With a little instinctive move to bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of the desk.

As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of it had flashed irrevocably to her mind's centre.

When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing by the desk. She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes flamed—blasted.

Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense.

"I am sure, my dear—if you had only—only trusted me—implicitly—your opinion of this affair—"

At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild, grim intensity.

"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can't hurt me."

"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly.

"I can go now."

"You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!"

For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem to hear.

"Yes—that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me now."

He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was demanded of him.

"I don't understand you!"

Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last.

"But he will—he will!" she cried exultingly, and her eyes were wet with an unexplained gladness.



CHAPTER XIX

A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP

The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened with gossip—retained, of course, within seemly bounds. There was absent the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new with truths that were yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that discreet expressions were oftenest heard during the function.

One brother declared that the Linfords were both extremists: one with his absurdly radical disbelief in revealed religion; the other flying at last to the Mother Church for that authority which he professed not to find in his own.

Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford now, one brought away the notion that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother Church might become his only bride. True, Linford said nothing at all like this;—the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words of his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed to be the very spirit of his speech upon the subject. Certainly no other reason had been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic tie. Conjecture was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country home at Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public prints, to give any reason whatsoever.

His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker unfolded the early edition of an evening paper to a page which bore an excellent likeness of Dr. Linford.

"I'll read you some things from his letter," he said, "though I'll confess I don't wholly approve his taste in giving it to the press. However—here's one bit:

"'When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church I dreamed of wielding an influence that would tend to harmonise the conflicting schools of churchmanship. It seemed to me that my little life might be of value, as I comprehended the essentials of church citizenship. I will not dwell upon my difficulties. The present is no time to murmur. Suffice it to say, I have long held, I have taught, nearly every Catholic doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; and I have accepted and revived in St. Antipas every Catholic practice not positively forbidden.

"But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican orders of the ministry are invalid. I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence—the actual body and blood of our Saviour?

"After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been pleased to lead me. In my humble sight the only spiritual body that actually claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body divinely protected from teaching error, is the Holy, Catholic and Roman Church.

"For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, as every man must exercise it once, at least, and I now seek communion with this largest and oldest body of Christians in the world. I have faced an emergency fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. I have met it; the rest is with my God. Praying that I might be adorned with the splendours of holiness, and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence from Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up every preconceived notion; follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads.' Presently, God willing, I shall be in communion with the See of Rome, where I feel that there is a future for me!"

The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish with an aimless fork. He now laid down his paper to give the food his entire attention.

"You see," began Floud, "I say one brother is quite as extreme as the other."

Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter.

"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we reach it—so hasten now—I've a presentiment that our friend goes still farther afield."

Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed the reading.

"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy—a peasant moralist with certain delusions of grandeur—an agitator and heretic whom the authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people. In short, the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis. If the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a figment of the Jewish imagination—Jesus becomes man. And this is what Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or indolence—too often, alas! through our own skepticism—have allowed Science thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought to surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour—not perceiving that we must keep both or neither.

"There is the issue. The Church says that man is born under the curse of God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, by the blood of God's only begotten Son.

"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote brute ancestors. If science be right—and by mere evidence its contention is plausible—then original sin is a figment and natural man is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no saviour—since he is under no curse of God—but having every reason to believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward trend.

"But if one finds mere evidence insufficient to outweigh that most glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of faith on the world's cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For the ramparts of Protestantism are honeycombed with infidelity—and what is most saddening, they are giving way to blows from within. Protestantism need no longer fear the onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what concerns it is the fact that the stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks—a stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox.

"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the Mother Church. Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to believe. There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest upon it.

"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious sentimentality which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest, since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their doctrine is unchristian—impiously and preposterously unchristian. Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to God's divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in material equality—only in the bonds of love to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last end in heaven. Most pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the sacrifice of our Lord.

"Upon these two rocks—of original sin and of prince and subject, riches and poverty—by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand; and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues. Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian social equality!"

There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and returned at last to his fish. To Father Riley it occurred that these would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence. In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks that might too easily have been indiscreet.

"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen—I'll listen blandly whilst I disarticulate this beautiful bird."

"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again declared the discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been sufficiently remarked.

"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," suggested Father Riley.

"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man," remarked the amiable Presbyterian—"I trust God's Providence to care for children and fools—"

"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the twinkling-eyed Methodist. "That is, we asked for the belief of the average non-church-goer—and I dare say he gave it to us. It occurs to me further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. We can all name a dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which actually justify his utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may profit by his blasphemies."

"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness.

"Ah—that is what the Church must determine. We already know how to reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking—but how reach the educated—the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, biggest minds are outside the Church—indifferentists or downright opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like these to perish—I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, or Spencer, or even Darwin—Question: has the Church power to save the educated?"

"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley.

"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker.

"Gentlemen, you jest with me—but I shall continue to feel grateful to our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities. Now I know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has lost interest in the church."

"There's a large class we can't take from you," said Father Riley—"that class with whom religion is a mode of respectability."

"And you can't take our higher critics, either—more's the pity!"

"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the Catholic, again, "that was a dear, blasphemous young whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish the guiltless indecence of a babe—he was that shockingly naif!"

"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," repeated the high-church rector.

"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the Presbyterian.

"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began Whittaker—

"Didn't I tell you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, the outrageous cynic! Be braced for him, now!"

"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly, "that those people, Linford and his brother—and even that singularly effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce—you know I dare say that they—really you know—that they possess the courage of—"

"Their convictions!" concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude.

"No—I was about to say—the courage—of ours."

A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a Unitarian!" as if to himself in playful confidence.

But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion of the ethnic Trinities.

THE END