“Oh, I’m not nearly good enough for Poppy,” he said deprecatingly.  He seemed used to Poppy’s silence, and, indeed, whenever her silent absence from speech was most marked, he bent towards her in a tender attitude which showed a resolution to regard it as maidenly bashfulness.  “Well, to get back to my story.  I stood there peering through the crowd for another look at her, and an officer began preaching.  Captain Harris it was.  I didn’t take any particular notice of him.”  He jerked his whitish face about contemptuously.  “He’s a poor preacher, isn’t he, Poppy?  He never gets a grip on the crowd, does he?  And they can’t hear him beyond the first few rows.  I don’t think I heard more than a few sentences that first evening.  If I’d had been in the Army as many years as he has, and I couldn’t preach any better than that, I’d find some other way of serving Jesus.  I would really.

“But after that”—­he stopped, looked at some vision in the air before him which filled his eyes with tears and fire, and sighed deeply—­“Captain Sampson preached the gospel.  It’s Captain Sampson I’ve been working under since I joined the Army.  Oh, mother, mother, I wish you could hear him preach.  He would give you Jesus.  That first evening I heard him I saw Jesus as plain as I see you.  I saw Him then looking fierce like He was when He scourged the moneychangers out of the temple.  But when I’m alone, I see the other Jesus, the way he was most times.”  He put his head back and bleated:  “‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’  The One that loves us when we’re weak and when we fall, and loves us all the better for it.  Even you”—­he looked at Richard with a faint, malign joyfulness—­“must feel the want of Him sometimes.  Life can’t be a path of roses for any of us, however strong and clever we are.  So I say it’s not good preaching to go on always about fighting for Jesus and being a good soldier, and making it seem as if religion was just another trouble we had to face.”  His voice broke with petulance.  “It’s a shame not to show people Gentle Jesus.”

He checked himself.  Remorse ran red under his pale skin.  “What am I saying?” he cried out.  “Captain Sampson is a holy man!  If he’s harsh to those that work under him it’s right he should be.  God chasteneth whom He loveth, and it’s the same way with Captain Sampson I expect.  It’s really a way of showing that he cares about you and is anxious about you.  And anyway, he did give me Jesus that evening.  Oh, mother, it was so wonderful!” The words rushed out of him.  “He made you feel all tingling like you do when the fire engine goes past.  Oh, it’s an evening to remember!  And it gave me Jesus!  Oh, mother, you don’t know what it’s like to find Jesus!  To know”—­his voice whistled exultantly over the stricken tea-table—­“that there’s Somebody who really loves you!”

For one second Marion covered her face with her hands.