as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but rooted in convention.  Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly atoned for—­what became of them?  Either he was wrong to have espoused straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they were wrong in chasing him from that espousal.  There could be no making those extremes to meet.  But if he were wrong, having done the hardest thing already—­where could he turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some blinding cloud.  ‘I cannot have been wrong,’ he thought; ’any other course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor girl’s pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion I have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I cannot and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me, something is wrong—­but where—­what?’ He rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed.  He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this thing.  He had striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in his child and himself.  For that he was to be thrown out!  Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the clover, he found presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could see the spire of Harrow Church.

The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was in himself.  ‘I am unpractical,’ he thought.  ’It is so, I know.  Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me unpractical and dreamy.  Is it a sin—­I wonder?’ There were lambs in the next field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps.  The boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them.  He had not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young ’voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon.  A boy made a good leg hit.  “Well played!” he called.  Then, suddenly conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on the road back to London.  To resign; to await events; to send Noel away—­of those three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.  ‘Am I really so far from them,’ he thought, ’that they can wish me to go, for this?  If so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But I won’t believe it yet; I can’t believe it.’

The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.  He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.  Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.