Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn there in the age of the Druids.  It seemed impossible that he should ever move.  Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last, after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him impatiently on one of his big shoulders.  Evan winced and leapt away from him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God.  He did not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him.  But Turnbull was now something more dreadful than an enemy:  he was a thing sealed and devoted—­a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an executioner.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action would allow.

“James,” said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, “I asked for God’s answer and I have got it—­got it in my vitals.  He knows how weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the face of Our Lady—­yes, even with your blow upon her cheek.  But the honour of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man’s heart like iron.  I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a mere deserter.  Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly place and word, and there is nothing but fighting now.”

“I think I understand you,” said Turnbull, “but you say everything tail foremost.”

“She wants us to do it,” said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion.  “She has hurt herself so that we might do it.  She has left her good name and her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the other side of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we have broken some hole into heaven.”

“I thought I knew what you mean,” said Turnbull, biting his beard; “it does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this night.”

“I never liked you so much before,” said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.

As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room.  The mere sight of them made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and before they knew where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge of England that overlooks the Channel.  Evan said suddenly:  “Will they let me see her in heaven once in a thousand ages?” and addressed the remark to the editor of The Atheist, as on which he would be likely or qualified to answer.  But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.

Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.

“If that’s the view you take,” said Turnbull, “and I don’t say you are wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business.  As it happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well.  And unless I am mistaken there’s a way down the cliff just here which will land us on a stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us.”