me--I've
thought it more and more--it seems to me a sort of hobby. It's just for
Sundays."

He stared at her aghast, seeming to waver between grief and righteous
anger. But he said nothing. She went on coolly.

"I guess the trouble with you, Arnold, is that you're too much of a
clergyman--not enough of an ordinary sinful man."

He wavered no longer. His suspicion crystallised into certainty. His
words came through his teeth as if shot from a cannon. The Reverend
Arnold Imrie, for the first time in years, lost his temper, and lost it
with a completeness and animation that was magnificent. He turned
suddenly and glared at Judith, his face pale. Then he shot a trembling
finger at her.

"So," he snapped. "Six weeks of this--this--anarchist--can shatter the
faith of a lifetime. Such a faith. A Wynrod, too.... It is--I dare not
say what it is."

But he did dare. He launched into a passionate diatribe, which to
Judith, listening patiently, sounded very much like a funeral oration
over the body of a notorious scoundrel, so compounded it was of scorn
and pity and utter certainty of ultimate damnation and complacent
self-satisfaction that he was not as such. It was accompanied by
familiar pulpit gesticulations, used so long that they had become
unconscious. As he talked he paced back and forth, pausing now and again
to emphasise a point with a resounding thump on his hand. It was
excellent--oratory. But all through she had the feeling that it was only
a sermon, that the recital of her iniquities, so vividly phrased, was
only academic. And as he made his peroration, more from a lack of breath
than a lack of ideas, she laughed--mirthfully, unrestrainedly.

He stopped as if shot. He stared at her as if he could not believe his
ears.

"Very wonderful, Arnold," said Judith lazily, "but very absurd."

Flouted to the depths of his soul, Imrie gathered up his papers anew. It
was as if a priest, praying passionately to his idols, had suddenly
raised his eyes to find them with their thumbs to their noses. It was a
ghastly dream. He was like a ship that has dragged its anchor. He was
drifting in uncharted waters. The most dependable of his flock, the
dearest of his friends, the star of the best that was in him, had
deliberately, thoroughly, and without any effort at concealment, held up
all that he held sacred, to ridicule. His chagrin showed in his face,
and Judith was a little appalled by what she had done. But she would not
ha