agony to His creatures—­and that by discovering reasons for the afflictions of others, I should learn to become reconciled to my own.  But no!—­nothing has been made clear!  I have seen innocent women die in the tortures of the damned—­while their drunken husbands have lived to carouse over their coffins.  Children,—­mere babes—­are afflicted with diseases for which often no cause can be assigned and no cure discovered—­while over the whole sweltering mass of human helplessness and ignorance, Death stalks triumphant,—­and God, though called upon for rescue with prayers and tears, withdraws Himself in clouds of impenetrable silence.  It is all hopeless, useless, irremediable!  That is why my thoughts turn to Rome—­I say, let me believe in something, if it be only a fairy tale!  Let me hear grand music mounting to heaven, even if human words cannot reach so high!—­let me think that guardian angels exist, even if there is nothing in space save a blind Chance spawning life particles uselessly,—­let my soul and senses feel the touch of something higher, vaster, purer and better than what the Church of England calls Christianity at this present day!”

“And that ’something higher, vaster, purer and better’—­would you call it the Church of Rome?” asked Walden.  “In suggestion,—­in emotion and poetic inspiration, yes!”—­said Brent—­“In theory and in practice, no!”

There was a pause.  Walden sat for a few moments absorbed in anxious thought.  Then he looked up with a cheerful air.

“Harry,” he said—­“Will you do me a favour?  Promise that you will postpone the idea of seceding, or as you put it, ‘returning’ to Rome, for six months.  Will you?  At the end of that time we’ll discuss it again.”

The Bishop looked uneasy.

“I would rather do what has to be done at once,”—­he said.

“Then I must talk to you straightly,”—­continued John, bracing himself up, and squaring his shoulders resolutely—­“I must forget that you are my Bishop, and speak just as man to man.  All the facts of the case can be summed up in one word—­Selfishness!  Pure Selfishness, Harry!—­and I never thought I should have had to convict you of it!”

Brent drew himself slowly up in his chair.

“Selfishness!” he echoed, dreamily—­“I can take anything from you, John!—­I did at college,—­but—­selfishness—–­”

“Selfishness!” repeated John, firmly—­“You have had to suffer a grief—­a great grief,—­and because it was so sudden, so tragic and overwhelming, you draw a mourning veil of your own across the very face of God!  You try to rule your diocese by the measure of your own rod of affliction.  And, finding that nothing is clear to you, because of your own obstructive spirit, you would set up a fresh barrier between yourself and Eternal Wisdom, by deserting your post here, and separating yourself from all the world save the shadow of the woman you yourself loved!  Harry, my dear old friend, unless I had heard this from your own lips, I should never have believed it of you!”