“What then do you expect the final revelation will do for you?”

“I have told you,” said he.  “It will make me immortal.”

But it was not so much from speech and argument that Darcy grew to grasp his friend’s conception, as from the ordinary conduct of his life.  They were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street, when an old woman, very bent and decrepit, but with an extraordinary cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage.  Frank instantly stopped when he saw her.

“You old darling!  How goes it all?” he said.

But she did not answer, her dim old eyes were riveted on his face; she seemed to drink in like a thirsty creature the beautiful radiance which shone there.  Suddenly she put her two withered old hands on his shoulders.

“You’re just the sunshine itself,” she said, and he kissed her and passed on.

But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such tenderness occurred.  A child running along the path towards them fell on its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain.  A look of horror came into Frank’s eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled at full speed down the street, and did not pause till he was out of hearing.  Darcy, having ascertained that the child was not really hurt, followed him in bewilderment.

“Are you without pity then?” he asked.

Frank shook his head impatiently.

“Can’t you see?” he asked.  “Can’t you understand that that sort of thing, pain, anger, anything unlovely throws me back, retards the coming of the great hour!  Perhaps when it comes I shall be able to piece that side of life on to the other, on to the true religion of joy.  At present I can’t.”

“But the old woman.  Was she not ugly?”

Frank’s radiance gradually returned.

“Ah, no.  She was like me.  She longed for joy, and knew it when she saw it, the old darling.”

Another question suggested itself.

“Then what about Christianity?” asked Darcy.

“I can’t accept it.  I can’t believe in any creed of which the central doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer.  Perhaps it was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I don’t understand how it was possible.  So I leave it alone; my affair is joy.”

They had come to the weir above the village, and the thunder of riotous cool water was heavy in the air.  Trees dipped into the translucent stream with slender trailing branches, and the meadow where they stood was starred with midsummer blossomings.  Larks shot up caroling into the crystal dome of blue, and a thousand voices of June sang round them.  Frank, bare-headed as was his wont, with his coat slung over his arm and his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, stood there like some beautiful wild animal with eyes half-shut and mouth half-open, drinking in the scented warmth of the air.  Then suddenly