r more seriously.
"I don't think it will be, but I do think that before very long we shall
have a better congregation of Christians than we have ever had before,
people who, I mean, will have lost their delusions about fashionable
Christianity--just as if there could be such a thing!--and who come to
hear the Word of God as it is, and not as most people would like it to
be. By the way, have you heard that the Canon, I mean Canon
Thornton-Moore, of Worcester, a man that I met at dinner at the Abbey,
has accepted the presentation of All Saints, Densmore Square? It is
supposed to be a little higher even than St. Chrysostom, and if possible
the congregation is even more disgustingly rich and fashionable and
everything that is not Christian."

"I must say, Vane, that you have all the uncompromising severity of the
true enthusiast, and the way in which you include your old father with
these hopeless sinners is really almost unfilial. I think I can tell
you this much, that to-night you are going to meet a very much greater
sinner than I am, a sinner to the extent of millions, and yet, from what
I have learned of him on the best possible authority, as honest a man,
as good-hearted a fellow, as ever fought the world single-handed and
beat it."

"Just as you did, dad," said Vane in a tone which reminded his father of
the old days. "I suppose there is nothing to be said of the other two
persons of the Infernal Trinity."

"Not at present," said Sir Arthur, with a sudden change in his voice
which made Vane look round at him. His face had changed with his tone.
He was leaning with his arms on the door of the cab, staring up at the
sky over the roofs of the houses. Vane noticed a little twitching of the
lip under the long grey moustache, and thought it well to hold his
peace.

Fortunately, perhaps, for both, the cab at that moment swung round out
of the main road into Warwick Gardens. Vane looked at the familiar
corner at which he had stopped that other hansom cab on that memorable
Boat Race night and got out, after Carol had denied him the kiss he
asked for, to meet his father on the pavement. Sir Arthur remembered it
too, and he had good reasons to, for he said as the cab swung round:

"Vane, when my lease is up I am going to leave this place. I never can
pass that corner without thinking of what no man ought to be obliged to
think of."

"I know what you mean, dad," cried Vane. "It was horrible enough, or at
least it might h