“Of course he has nothing else,” answered the curate; “and if he had, he must follow his conscience all the same.”

“There you are, Wingfold!—­always talking paradoxes!” said Faber.

“Why, man! you may only have a blundering boy to guide you, but if he is your only guide, you must follow him.  You don’t therefore call him a sufficient guide!”

“What a logomachist you are!  If it is a horn lantern you’ve got, you needn’t go mocking at it.”

“The lantern is not the light.  Perhaps you can not change your horn for glass, but what if you could better the light?  Suppose the boy’s father knew all about the country, but you never thought it worth while to send the lad to him for instructions?”

“Suppose I didn’t believe he had a father?  Suppose he told me he hadn’t?”

“Some men would call out to know if there was any body in the house to give the boy a useful hint.”

“Oh bother!  I’m quite content with my fellow.”

“Well, for my part I should count my conscience, were it ten times better than it is, poor company on any journey.  Nothing less than the living Truth ever with me can make existence a peace to me,—­that’s the joy of the Holy Ghost, Miss Meredith.—­What if you should find one day, Faber, that, of all facts, the thing you have been so coolly refusing was the most precious and awful?”

Faber had had more than enough of it.  There was but one thing precious to him; Juliet was the perfect flower of nature, the apex of law, the last presentment of evolution, the final reason of things!  The very soul of the world stood there in the dusk, and there also stood the foolish curate, whirling his little vortex of dust and ashes between him and her!

“It comes to this,” said Faber; “what you say moves nothing in me.  I am aware of no need, no want of that Being of whom you speak.  Surely if in Him I did live and move and have my being, as some old heathen taught your Saul of Tarsus, I should in one mode or another be aware of Him!”

While he spoke, Mr. Drake and Dorothy had come into the room.  They stood silent.

“That is a weighty word,” said Wingfold.  “But what if you feel His presence every moment, only do not recognize it as such?”

“Where would be the good of it to me then?”

“The good of it to you might lie in the blinding.  What if any further revelation to one who did not seek it would but obstruct the knowledge of Him?  Truly revealed, the word would be read untruly—­even as The Word has been read by many in all ages.  Only the pure in heart, we are told, shall see Him.  The man who, made by Him, does not desire Him—­how should he know Him?”

“Why don’t I desire Him then?—­I don’t.”

“That is for you to find out.”

“I do what I know to be right; even on your theory I ought to get on,” said Faber, turning from him with a laugh.

“I think so too,” replied Wingfold.  “Go on, and prosper.  Only, if there be untruth in you alongside of the truth—?  It might be, and you are not awake to it.  It is marvelous what things can co-exist in a human mind.”