“Oh, Father, you are darkening counsel,” said Lestrange.

“No, no,” said Father Payne, “I am just trying to face facts.”

“Well, then,” said Lestrange, “what is the ultimate thing?”

“The ultimate thing,” said Father Payne, “is of course the thing you call yourself—­but the ultimate instinct is probably a sense of proportion—­a sense of beauty, if you like!”

“But how does that work out in practice?” said Vincent.  “It seems to me to be a mere argument about names and titles.  You are using conscience as the sense of right and wrong, and, as you say, they often seem to have conflicting claims.  Lestrange used it in the further sense of the thing which ultimately decides your course.  It is right to be philanthropic, it is right to be artistic—­they may conflict; but something ultimately tells you what you can do, which is really more important than what you ought to do.”

“That is right,” said Father Payne, “I think the test is simply this—­that whenever you feel yourself paralysed, and your natural growth arrested by your obedience to any one claim—­instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it is—­the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your real life lies.  That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life.  That, it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm.  The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses—­celibate saints who ought to have been married, morbidly introspective saints who needed hard secular work, those were the people who did not dare to trust the sense of proportion, and were suspicious of the call of life.  Look at St. Augustine in the wonderful passage about light, ’sliding by me in unnumbered guises’—­he can only end by praying to be delivered from the temptation to enjoy the sight of dawn and sunset, as setting his affections too much upon the things of earth.  I mistrust the fear of life—­I mistrust all fear—­at least I think it will take care of itself, and must not be cultivated.  I think the call of God is the call of joy—­and I believe that the superstitious dread of joy is one of the most potent agencies of the devil.”

“But there are many joys which one has to mistrust,” said Lestrange; “mere sensual delights, for instance.”

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but most healthy and normal people, after a very little meddling with such delights, learn certainly enough that they only obscure the real, wholesome, temperate joys.  You have to compromise wisely with your instincts, I think.  You mustn’t spend too much time in frontal attacks upon them.  You have a quick temper, let us say.  Well, it is better to lose it occasionally and apologise, than to hold your tongue about matters in which you are interested for fear