With those words, he dispatched the telegram to the office.  Romayne attempted to make his acknowledgments.  Mr. Winterfield would hear no acknowledgments.

“My dear sir,” he said, with a smile that brightened his whole face, “you are engaged in writing a great historical work; and I am an obscure country gentleman, who is lucky enough to associate himself with the production of a new book.  How do you know that I am not looking forward to a complimentary line in the preface?  I am the obliged person, not you.  Pray consider me as a handy little boy who runs on errands for the Muse of History.  Do you smoke?”

Not even tobacco would soothe Romayne’s wasted and irritable nerves.  Father Benwell—­“all things to all men”—­cheerfully accepted a cigar from the box on the table.

“Father Benwell possesses all the social virtues,” Mr. Winterfield ran on.  “He shall have his coffee, and the largest sugar-basin that the hotel can produce.  I can quite understand that your literary labors have tried your nerves,” he said to Romayne, when he had ordered the coffee.  “The mere title of your work overwhelms an idle man like me.  ’The Origin of Religions’—­what an immense subject!  How far must we look back to find out the first worshipers of the human family?—­Where are the hieroglyphics, Mr. Romayne, that will give you the earliest information?  In the unknown center of Africa, or among the ruined cities of Yucatan?  My own idea, as an ignorant man, is that the first of all forms of worship must have been the worship of the sun.  Don’t be shocked, Father Benwell—­I confess I have a certain sympathy with sun-worship.  In the East especially, the rising of the sun is surely the grandest of all objects—­the visible symbol of a beneficent Deity, who gives life, warmth and light to the world of his creation.”

“Very grand, no doubt,” remarked Father Benwell, sweetening his coffee.  “But not to be compared with the noble sight at Rome, when the Pope blesses the Christian world from the balcony of St. Peter’s.”

“So much for professional feeling!” said Mr. Winterfield.  “But, surely, something depends on what sort of man the Pope is.  If we had lived in the time of Alexander the Sixth, would you have called him a part of that noble sight?”

“Certainly—­at a proper distance,” Father Benwell briskly replied.  “Ah, you heretics only know the worst side of that most unhappy pontiff!  Mr. Winterfield, we have every reason to believe that he felt (privately) the truest remorse.”

“I should require very good evidence to persuade me of it.”

This touched Romayne on a sad side of his own personal experience.  “Perhaps,” he said, “you don’t believe in remorse?”

“Pardon me,” Mr. Winterfield rejoined, “I only distinguish between false remorse and true remorse.  We will say no more of Alexander the Sixth, Father Benwell.  If we want an illustration, I will supply it, and give no offense.  True remorse depends, to my mind, on a man’s accurate knowledge of his own motives—­far from a common knowledge, in my experience.  Say, for instance, that I have committed some serious offense—­”