She was puzzled.  To her the word sounded political.

“The ministry?”

“Yes.  You remember when you first saw me?  It was my first appearance.  I was to have been chosen pastor of that church.”

“Oh!”

She looked at him now with something like amazement.  This, then, accounted for the sombreness of his clothes and his little strip of white tie.  She had only the vaguest ideas as to the conduct of those various sects to be met with in English villages, but she had certainly believed that the post of preacher was filled indifferently by any member of the congregation, and she had looked upon his presence in the pulpit on that last Sunday as an accident.  To associate him with such an occupation permanently seemed to her little short of the ridiculous.  She laughed softly, showing, for the first time, her brilliantly white teeth, and his cheeks were stained with scarlet.

“I do not know why you laugh,” he said, with a note of fierceness in his tone.  “It is the part of my life which is behind me.  I was brought up to it, and traditions are hard to break away from.  I have been obliged to live in a little village, to constrain my life between the narrowest limits, to watch ignorance, and suffer prejudices as deeply rooted as the hills.  But all the same, it is nothing to laugh at.  The thing itself is great and good enough—­it is the people who are so hopeless.  No, there is nothing to laugh at,” he cried, with a sudden little burst of excitement, “but may God help the children whose eyes He has opened and who yet have to pass their lives on the smallest treadmill of the world.”

“You” she whispered, “have escaped.”

“I have escaped,” he murmured, with a sudden pallor, “but not scatheless.”

There was a silence between them then.  She recognised that she had made a mistake in questioning him about a past which he had already declared hateful.  The terror of an hour or more ago was in his face again.  He was back amongst the shadows whence she had beckoned him.  She yawned and took up her book.

They stopped at a great station, but the man was in a brown study and scarcely moved his head.  An angry guard came hurrying up to the window, but a few words from the lady and a stealthily opened purse worked wonders.  They were left undisturbed, and the train glided off.  She laid down her book and spoke again.

“Do you mind passing me my luncheon basket?” she said, “and opening that flask of wine?  Are you not hungry, too?”

He shook his head, but when he came to think of it he knew that he was ravenous.  She passed him sandwiches as a matter of course—­such sandwiches as he had never eaten before—­and wine which was strange to him and which ran through his veins like warm magic.  Once more the load of evil memories seemed to pass away from him.  He was not so much at ease eating and drinking with her, but she easily acquired her former hold upon him.  She herself, whose appetite was assumed, watched him, and wondered more and more.