Reform, reform, was Daniel’s theme, especially the reform of the whole voting system.  He was a keen advocate of increased franchise and the ballot, and here the Parson differed from him.  The Parson, in his heart of hearts, would have taken the vote away from most of the people he knew; he would certainly not have enlarged its scope, and as to the system of the secret ballot-box, he was too used to knowing what all his parishioners did with their votes and to guiding their hands....  There were steps he could not take with Flynn; but Ishmael, listening, began to waver in his allegiance towards the Parson.  His own nature would have supported the idea of secret voting even if his progressive spirit, the eager spirit of youth that can put all right, had not urged him to be on the side of things new.  Already he had once or twice found himself failing to support the Parson’s advocacy of Derby, and in debate upheld Gladstone against Disraeli.  This evening it dawned upon him that Boase was not infallible, that times had moved past him....  The dear old Parson, of course he would always feel just the same about him; but after all he had stayed down here too long and was getting old ... he could not be expected to know as much as younger men.

It was only towards the end of the evening that Ishmael’s complacency received a slight prick that made it waver.  Dan had told of an Irishman who, after winning a case against his landlord, had hidden behind a hedge and shot him on the way home from the court.

“It was his heart was broken by all the trouble of it,” said Flynn, “and when the victory was his he didn’t want it.  If he’d lost his case he wouldn’t have done it.  But it’s a difficult thing to get into the head of a jury, especially when it’s a packed jury of black Protestants from the North.”

“We don’t make nearly enough account, in our laws or our private lives, of which of the two great divisions any deed falls into,” said the Parson.

“What divisions?” asked Flynn curiously.

“The divisions of what one may call the primary and secondary—­I mean, if a deed be born of itself, a pure creation, or whether it is the result of a reaction.  I have had more girls ‘go wrong’ after a religious revival than at any other time.  Pure reaction!  I firmly believe reaction is at the bottom of half the marriages and all the divorces of the world.”

“It’s at the back of quite half the crime,” assented Flynn, “and murder should certainly be classified under that distinction.”

“It’s at the bottom of nearly all the decisive steps in a man’s own life,” said Ishmael thoughtfully.  He was thinking that his self-created impulses seemed to have ceased with the death of his love for Blanche.  She and Cloom had both been passions born of their own inevitable necessity.  But his marriage came under the heading of “reaction” if ever anything did.  He wondered whether this new fire he felt beginning to warm him did not partake of some quality of reaction also—­reaction from the dreams and undisciplined longings of adolescence which had served him so badly.  At the thought the glow died down, and greyness spread over the vague budding schemes that had begun to swell life out.