ongregation. Jolly with God. Why
wasn't he left alone? Had been until Maggie came. Maggie like a stone
flung into a frosty pool! Broke everything up, simply because she was
unlike other people. He'd married her because he thought he could make
her into what he pleased. Well, it had been the other way. Oh, she was
queer, queer, queer.

He stopped, his large boots in a warm puddle. He felt the warm sun hot
through the damp mist. He wanted to take her into his arms, to hug her,
above all to feel her response. To feel her response, that was what,
for years now, he had been wanting, and never once had she responded.
Never once. She let him do as he pleased, but she was passive. She
didn't love him. Grace loved him, but how dull Grace was! Dull--it was
all dull! Grace was dull, Skeaton was dull, the church was dull--God
was dull! God? Where was God? He looked around. There was no God. To
what had he been praying all these years? He had not been praying. His
congregation had not been praying. They were all dead and God was dead
too.

He looked up and saw that his boots were in a puddle. He walked on. For
a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years
obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they
settled down and resolved themselves once more. The muscles of Paul's
soul were stiff with disuse. Training is a lengthy affair and a
tiresome business to the stout and middle-aged.

The hedges gave way to houses; he was in the High Street. He saw then,
plastered at intervals on the hoardings, strange phenomena. It was the
colour that first attracted him--a bright indecent pink with huge black
lettering. Because it was the offseason in Skeaton other announcements
were few. All the more prominent then the following:

THE KINGSCOTE BEETHEEN WILL HOLD A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL IN THE TOWN
OF SKEATON-ON-SEA FROM APRIL 10 TO 16.-----SERVICES 10 A.M., 3 P.M.
SPECIAL SONG SERVICE, 7.30 P.M. DAILY All are Cordially Invited.
ADDRESSES BY REV. JOHN THURSTON. REV. WILLIAM CRASHAW. SISTER AVIES.

Paul stared at this placard with horror and disgust in his soul. For
the moment Maggie and Grace and all the scandal connected with them was
forgotten. This was terrible. By temperament, tradition, training, he
loathed and feared every phase of religion known to him as
"Methodistic." Under this term he included everything that was noisy,
demonstrative, ill-bred and melodramatic. Once when an undergraduate at