“I long for more than that.  I should like to have seen David Garrick’s reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson’s love passages with his very mature wife.  I should also like to have heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room.”

“Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?”

“Of course.  I question if there was anything very much better aboard the Water Nymph.  By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the yachting party.  She did not mention it to her husband, however.  She thought that there should be a chaplain aboard.  Now, considering that Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain paper of mine in the Zeit Geist Review.”

“I’m sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home.”

“And in writing the paper in the Zeit Geist?  You have read it?”

“Oh, yes!  I have read it.”

“You don’t like it?”

“How could I like it?  You have known me now for sometime.  How could you fancy that I should like it—­that is, if you thought of me at all in connection with it?  I don’t myself see why you should think of me at all.”

He rose and stood before her.  She had risen to take his empty cup from him.

“Don’t you know that I think of you always, Phyllis?” he said, in that low tone of his which flowed around the hearts of his hearers, and made their hearts as one with his heart.  “Don’t you know that I think of you always—­that all my hopes are centered in you?”

“I am so sorry if that is the case, Mr. Holland,” said she.  “I don’t want to give you pain, but I must tell you again what I told you long ago:  you have passed completely out of my life.  If you had not done so before, the publication of that article in the Zeit Geist would force me to tell you that you had done so now.  To me my religion has always been a living thing; my Bible has been my guide.  You trampled upon the one some months ago, you have trampled on the other now.  You shocked me, Mr. Holland.”

“I have always loved you, Phyllis.  I think I love you better than I ever did, if that were possible,” said he.  “I am overwhelmed with grief at the thought of the barrier which your fancy has built up between us.”

“Fancy?”

“Your fancy, dear child.  I feel that the barrier which you fancy is now between us is unworthy of you.”

“What?  Do you mean to say that you think that my detestation—­my—­my horror of your sneers at the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God—­of the contempt you have heaped upon the Church which I believe to be God’s agent on earth for the salvation of men’s souls—­do you think that my detestation of these is a mere girlish fancy?”