furniture.  He took his place among the cases of stuffed humming birds and glass-topped tables of curios, among the brocade curtains with shaped vallances and golden tassels, among the chandeliers and lacquered cabinets and cages of avadavats, sitting there like a great Buddha while he chatted to the two old ladies of a society that seemed to Mark as remote as the people in Pelleas and Melisande.  From time to time one of the old ladies would try to draw Mark into the conversation; but he preferred listening and let them think that his monosyllabic answers signified a shyness that did not want to be conspicuous.  Soon they appeared to forget his existence.  Deep in the lap of an armchair covered with a glazed chintz of Sevres roses and sable he was enthralled by that chronicle of phantoms, that frieze of ghosts passing before his eyes, while the present faded away upon the growing quiet of the London evening and became remote as the distant roar of the traffic, which itself was remote as the sound of the sea in a shell.  Fox-hunting squires caracoled by with the air of paladins; and there was never a lady mentioned that did not take the fancy like a princess in an old tale.

“He’s universal,” Mark thought.  “And that’s one of the secrets of being a great priest.  And that’s why he can talk about Heaven and make you feel that he knows what he’s talking about.  And if I can discern what he is,” Mark went on to himself, “I can be what he is.  And I will be,” he vowed in the rapture of a sudden revelation.

On Sunday morning Father Rowley preached in the fashionable church of St. Cyprian’s, South Kensington, after which they lunched at the vicarage.  The Reverend Drogo Mortemer was a dapper little bachelor (it would be inappropriate to call such a worldly little fellow a celibate) who considered himself the leader of the most advanced section of the Catholic Party in the Church of England.  He certainly had a finger in the pie of every well-cooked intrigue, knew everybody worth knowing in London, and had the private ears of several bishops.  No more skilful place-finder existed, and any member of the advanced section who wanted a place for himself or for a friend had recourse to Mortemer.

“But the little man is all right,” Father Rowley had told Mark.  “Many people would have used his talents to further himself.  He has every qualification for the episcopate except one—­he believes in the Sacraments.”

Mr. Mortemer was the only son of James Mortimer of the famous firm of Hadley and Mortimer.  His father had become rich before he married the youngest daughter of an ancient but impoverished house, and soon after his marriage he died.  Mrs. Mortemer brought up her son to forget that his father had been a tradesman and to remember that he was rich.  In order to dissociate herself from a partnership which now existed only in name above the plate glass of the enormous shop in Oxford Street Mrs. Mortemer took to spelling