but nevertheless he had remained what he was—­a man of ideas rather than of practice, and without Monsignor the reformation would have come to naught.  Evelyn was strangely interested to know what Ulick thought of Monsignor, and she waited eager for him to speak.  She would have liked to hear him enthusiastic, but he said that Monsignor was no more than an Oxford don with a taste for dogma and for a cardinal’s hat.  He was not a man of ideas, but a man that would do well in an election or a strike.  He was what folk call “a leader of men,” and Ulick held that power over the passing moment was a sign of inferiority.  Shakespeare and Shelley and Blake had never participated in any movement; they were the movement itself, they were the centres of things.  Christ, too, had failed to lead men, he was far too much above them; but St. Paul, the man of inferior ideas, had succeeded where Christ had failed.  Mostyn, he maintained, was much more interested in dogma than in religion; he abhorred mysticism, and believed in organisation.  He considered his Church from the point of view of a trades union.  An unspiritual man, one much more interested in theology than in God—­an able shepherd with an instinct for lost sheep whose fixed and commonplace ideas gave him command over weak and exalted natures, natures which were frequently much more spiritual than his own.  Evelyn listened, amused, though she could not think of Monsignor quite as Ulick did.  Monsignor had said that if we ask ourselves to what our unhappiness is attributable, we find that it is attributable to having followed the way of the world instead of the way of Christ.

It seemed to her impossible that a man of inferior intelligence such as Ulick described could think so clearly.  She reminded Ulick of these very sentences which had so greatly moved her, and it flattered her to hear him admit it, that the idea which had so greatly struck her was penetrating and far-reaching, but he denied that it was possible that it could be Monsignor’s own.  It was something he had got out of a book, and seeing the effect that could be made of it, he had introduced it into his sermon.  In support of this opinion, he said that all the rest of the sermon was sententious commonplace about the soul, and obedience to the Church.

“But you will be able to judge for yourself.  He is coming to the concert to-night.”

“Then I must have a dress to wear, I suppose he would like me to wear sackcloth.  But I am going to wear a pretty pink silk, which I hope you will like.  Call that hansom, please.”

It was amusing to watch her write the note, hear her explain to the cabman:  if he brought back the right dress he was to get a sovereign.  It was amusing to stroll on through the naked Sunday streets, talking of the music they had just heard and of Monsignor, to find suddenly that they had lost their way and could see no one to direct them.  These little incidents served to enhance their happiness.  They