't run away from them. That's what I've been doing these
days, and that's what I do not think even a man like yourself does
fairly. You think, I take it, that a girl like that is damned utterly by
all the canons of theology, and then, forced on by pity and tenderness,
you cry out against them all that she is God's making and He will not
throw her away. Is that it?"

Arnold slightly evaded an answer. "How can you save her, Graham?" he
asked.

"I can't. I don't pretend I can. I've nothing to say or do. I see only
one flicker of hope, and that lies in the fact that she doesn't
understand what love is. No shadow of the truth has ever come her way.
If now, by any chance, she could see for one instant--in _fact_, mind
you--the face of God.... If God is Love," he added. They walked a dozen
paces. "And even then she might refuse," he said.

"Whose fault would that be?" demanded the older man.

Peter answered quickly, "Whose fault? Why, all our faults--yours and
mine, and the fault of men like Pennell and Donovan, as well as her own,
too, as like as not. We've all helped build up the scheme of things as
they are, and we are all responsible. We curse the Germans for making
this damned war, and it is the war that has done most to make that girl;
but they didn't make it. No Kaiser made it, and no Nietzsche. The only
person who had no hand in it that I know of was Jesus Christ."

"And those who have left all and followed Him," said Arnold softly.

"Precious few," retorted Peter.

The other had nothing to say.

* * * * *

During these months Peter wrote often to Hilda, and with increasing
frankness. Her replies grew shorter as his letters grew longer. It was
strange, perhaps, that he should continue to write, but the explanation
was not far to seek. It was by her that he gauged the extent of his
separation from the old outlook, and in her that he still clung,
desperately, as it were, to the past. Against reason he elevated her
into a kind of test position, and if her replies gave him no
encouragement, they at least served to make him feel the inevitableness
and the reality of his present position. It would have been easy to get
into the swim and let it carry him carelessly on--moderately easy, at any
rate. But with Hilda to refer to he was forced to take notice, and it was
she, therefore, that hastened the end. Just after Christmas, in a fit of
temporary boldness, he told her about Louise, so