Looking back, I cannot see a cloud on the terrestrial horizon—­I see nothing but a blaze of sunshine; descents of slippery grass to moons of snow-white shingle, cold to the bare flesh; red promontories running out into a sea that was like sapphire; and our happy clan climbing, bathing, boating, lounging, chattering, all the hot day through.  Once more I have to record the fact, which I think is not without interest, that precisely as my life ceases to be solitary, it ceases to be distinct.  I have no difficulty in recalling, with the minuteness of a photograph, scenes in which my Father and I were the sole actors within the four walls of a room, but of the glorious life among wild boys on the margin of the sea I have nothing but vague and broken impressions, delicious and illusive.

It was a remarkable proof of my Father’s temporary lapse into indulgence that he made no effort to thwart my intimacy with these my new companions.  He was in an unusually humane mood himself.  His marriage was one proof of it; another was the composition at this time of the most picturesque, easy and graceful of all his writings, The Romance of Natural History, even now a sort of classic.  Everything combined to make him believe that the blessing of the Lord was upon him, and to clothe the darkness of the world with at least a mist of rose-colour.  I do not recollect that ever at this time he bethought him, when I started in the morning for a long day with my friends on the edge of the sea, to remind me that I must speak to them, in season and out of season, of the Blood of Jesus.  And I, young coward that I was, let sleeping dogmas lie.

My companions were not all of them the sons of saints in our communion; their parents belonged to that professional class which we were only now beginning to attract to our services.  They were brought up in religious, but not in fanatical, families, and I was the only ‘converted’ one among them.  Mrs. Paget, of whom I shall have presently to speak, characteristically said that it grieved her to see ‘one lamb among so many kids’.  But ‘kid’ is a word of varied significance and the symbol did not seem to us effectively applied.  As a matter of fact, we made what I still feel was an excellent tacit compromise.  My young companions never jeered at me for being ‘in communion with the saints’, and I, on my part, never urged the Atonement upon them.  I began, in fact, more and more to keep my own religion for use on Sundays.

It will, I hope, have been observed that among the very curious grown-up people into whose company I was thrown, although many were frail and some were foolish, none, so far as I can discern, were hypocritical.  I am not one of those who believe that hypocrisy is a vice that grows on every bush.  Of course, in religious more than in any other matters, there is a perpetual contradiction between our thoughts and our deeds which is inevitable to our social order, and is bound to lead to cette tromperie mutuelle of which Pascal speaks.  But I have often wondered, while admiring the splendid portrait of Tartuffe, whether such a monster ever, or at least often, has walked the stage of life; whether Moliere observed, or only invented him.