“Come on now, Hughie—­tell me who she is.  I won’t give you away,” Tom would beg.  Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the sisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties Tom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called “social life,” never could be induced to go.

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent.  Typical as no other man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves, the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world and defied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of treason.  An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to him as the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a remarkable influence.  His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise of his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if they “swore off,” Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again, and having accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new oath and see that it was kept.  Alcohol seemed to have no effect whatever on him.  Though he was in the class above me, I met him frequently at a club to which I had the honour to belong, then a suite of rooms over a shop furnished with a pool and a billiard table, easy-chairs and a bar.  It has since achieved the dignity of a house of its own.

We were having, one evening, a “religious” argument, Cinibar, Laurens and myself and some others.  I can’t recall how it began; I think Cinibar had attacked the institution of compulsory chapel, which nobody defended; there was something inherently wrong, he maintained, with a religion to which men had to be driven against their wills.  Somewhat to my surprise I found myself defending a Christianity out of which I had been able to extract but little comfort and solace.  Neither Laurens nor Conybear, however, were for annihilating it:  although they took the other side of the discussion of a subject of which none of us knew anything, their attacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still under the spell exerted by a youthful training.

We were all of us aware of Ralph, who sat at some distance looking over the pages of an English sporting weekly.  Presently he flung it down.

“Haven’t you found out yet that man created God, Hughie?” he inquired.  “And even if there were a personal God, what reason have you to think that man would be his especial concern, or any concern of his whatever?  The discovery of evolution has knocked your Christianity into a cocked hat.”

I don’t remember how I answered him.  In spite of the superficiality of his own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I was ingloriously routed.  Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was all there was to it....  After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurens admitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring that Ralph had gone too far.  I spent a miserable night, recalling