‘I see the awkwardness,’ murmured Merton.

’And then Remorse has set in, with all her horrors.  Julia has wept, oh! for nights, on my shoulder.’

‘Happy shoulder,’ murmured Merton.

’And so, as she dare not shatter their ideals, and perhaps cause them to plunge into excesses, moral or doctrinal, this is what she has done.  She has said to each, that what the Church, any Church, needs is martyrs, and that if they will go to benighted lands, where the crown of martyrdom may still be won, then, if they return safe in five years, then she—­will think of naming a day.  You will easily see the attractions of this plan for Julia, Mr. Merton.  No ideals were shattered, the young men being unaware of the circumstances.  They might forget her—­’

‘Impossible,’ cried Merton.

‘They might forget her, or, perhaps they—­’

Miss Crofton hesitated.

‘Perhaps they might never—?’ asked Merton.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Crofton; ’perhaps they might not.  That would be all to the good for the Church; no ideals would be shattered—­the reverse—­and dear Julia would—­’

‘Cherish their pious memories,’ said Merton.

‘I see that you understand me,’ said Miss Crofton.

Merton did understand, and he was reminded of the wicked lady, who, when tired of her lovers, had them put into a sack, and dropped into the Seine.

‘But,’ he asked, ’has this ingenious system failed to work?  I should suppose that each young man, on distant and on deadly shores, was far from causing inconvenience.’

‘The defect of the system,’ said Miss Crofton, ’is that none of them has gone, or seems in a hurry to go.  The first—­that was Mr. Bathe, Julia?’

Julia nodded.

’Mr. Bathe was to have gone to Turkey during the Armenian atrocities, and to have forced England to intervene by taking the Armenian side and getting massacred.  Julia was intensely interested in the Armenians.  But Mr. Bathe first said that he must lead Julia to the altar before he went; and then the massacres fell off, and he remains at Cheltenham, and is very tiresome.  And then there is Mr. Clancy, he was to go out to China, and denounce the gods of the heathen Chinese in the public streets.  But he insisted that Julia should first be his, and he is at Leamington, and not a step has he taken to convert the Boxers.’

Merton knew the name of Clancy.  Clancy had been his fag at school, and Merton thought it extremely improbable that the Martyr’s crown would ever adorn his brow.

’Then—­and this is the last of them, of the clergy, at least—­Mr. Brooke:  he was to visit the New Hebrides, where the natives are cannibals, and utterly unawakened.  He is as bad as the others.  He won’t go alone.  Now, Julia is obliged to correspond with all of them in affectionate terms (she keeps well out of their way), and this course of what she feels to be duplicity is preying terribly on her conscience.’