blushing face of his daughter’s private life, besides affording one long and glaring demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide its flock:  If a man could not keep his own daughter in the straight path—­whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be thought about, but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had spent so much money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy manner was greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many people; and, though his love of music and vestments had always caused heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they went to was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other churches.  Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.  Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did go on.

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing concrete or tangible came Pierson’s way.  He went about his usual routine without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret and creeping.  Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded by one great wound in others; but it was some weeks before anything occurred to rouse within him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.

And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul.  He was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the Square, when a low voice behind him said: 

“Wot price the little barstard?”

A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him, with mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his force, he said: 

“How dare you—­how dare you use that word?” His face and voice must have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him to sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands.  In two seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there for a second; one of them shouted “Gran’pa”; then they vanished.  He was left with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for years—­the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to sudden murderous rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning against the Garden railings, with the thought:  ’God forgive me!  I could have killed them—­I could have killed them!’ There had been a devil in him.  If he had had something in his hand, he might now have been a murderer:  How awful!  Only one had spoken; but he could have killed them both!  And the word was true, and was in all mouths—­all low common mouths, day after day, of his own daughter’s child!  The ghastliness of this thought, brought home so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have bent them.