Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and it only opened its lips to say, after a silence:  “I thought people in our time were supposed to respect each other’s religion.”

Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on the obvious answer:  “But what about a man’s irreligion?” The face only answered:  “Well, you ought to be more broadminded.”

If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have snorted with his equine neigh of scorn.  But in this case he seemed knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were rebuked by the innocence of a child.  He could not dissociate anything that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and virtue.  Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was at present soaked in ethics.  He could have applied moral terms to the material objects of her environment.  If someone had spoken of “her generous ribbon” or “her chivalrous gloves” or “her merciful shoe-buckle,” it would not have seemed to him nonsense.

He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were momentarily softened and a little saddened also.  “It won’t do, you know,” she said; “you can’t find out the truth in that way.  There are such heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays, and they all think they are right.  My uncle was a Swedenborgian.”

MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child’s toy theatre.

“The time’s gone by for all that,” she went on; “you can’t find out the real thing like that—­if there is really anything to find——­” and she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough in her emotions.

“Our object,” said Turnbull, shortly, “is to make an effective demonstration”; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again and found it smaller than ever.

“It would be in the newspapers, of course,” said the girl.  “People read the newspapers, but they don’t believe them, or anything else, I think.”  And she sighed again.

She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if completing the sentence:  “Anyhow, the whole thing’s quite absurd.”

“I don’t think,” began Turnbull, “that you quite realize——­ Hullo! hullo—­hullo—­what’s this?”

The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way.  A sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.

“Beg your pardon, miss,” he said with some embarrassment, for he knew her for a daughter of a dominant house, “but we have reason to believe that the gentlemen in your car are——­” and he hesitated for a polite phrase.