cepted by Christians, would make Christianity a practical
impossibility, this headstrong, unthinking visionary, reckless of all
the best traditions of his Church and his cloth, was going to address an
assembly of infidels and atheists, and, as a minister of the Gospel,
make friends with those who blasphemed the name of God every time they
used it, and did their utmost to destroy the edifice of Christianity
and to uproot the foundations of the Christian faith.

It was monstrous, it was horrible, and the general sense of the
speeches, and of the resolutions which were unanimously and
enthusiastically carried at the end of the meeting, was that the man who
could preach heresy in a Christian pulpit, then, the next Sunday,
associate himself deliberately with infidels and atheists, was not
worthy to remain within the fold of the Christian Ministry.

Of course, the speeches were duly reported in the papers the next
morning with, in some cases, a considerable amount of editorial
embroidery, and nowhere were they read with greater interest than at the
breakfast-table of Sir Arthur's house in Warwick Gardens, especially as,
side by side with them, came the announcement that another meeting of
protest was to be held at St. James's Hall on the Saturday evening,
under the auspices of a committee of members of the English Church
Union. The chair was to be taken by Canon Thornton-Moore, and several of
the leading lights of High Anglicanism were to speak.

"What a very wicked person you must be, Vane," said Carol, who had
swiftly skimmed through some of the speeches and the comments on them.
"The Low Church people seem to have excommunicated you altogether, and
now the High Church are going to do it. Why don't you go to this meeting
to-night and give them a bit of your mind? I believe they are all
frightened of you and your new doctrines, and that is why they are
making such a fuss about it."

"My doctrines are not new, Carol," replied Vane, with a smile which
seemed to her very gentle and sweet. "They are just as old as
Christianity itself, and they are not mine, but the Master's. No, I
don't think I shall go to the meeting. I am afraid there will be quite
trouble enough without me, and, besides, personal controversy seldom
does any good at all. I only hope, indeed, that these good people will
keep away from the Hall of Science on Sunday night. It is the greatest
of pities that it was made public. I simply wanted to have a quiet ta