f a quite indefinable kind. It was impossible to say why he
admired him. Frank did nothing very well, but everything rather well; he
played Rugby football just not well enough to represent his college; he
had been in the Lower Boats at Eton, and the Lent Boat of his first year
at Cambridge; then he had given up rowing and played lawn-tennis in the
summer and fives in the Lent Term just well enough to make a brisk and
interesting game. He was not at all learned; he had reached the First
Hundred at Eton, and had read Law at Cambridge--that convenient branch
of study which for the most part fills the vacuum for intelligent
persons who have no particular bent and are heartily sick of classics;
and he had taken a Third Class and his degree a day or two before. He
was remarkably averaged, therefore; and yet, somehow or another, there
was that in him which compelled Jack's admiration. I suppose it was that
which is conveniently labeled "character." Certainly, nearly everybody
who came into contact with him felt the same in some degree.

His becoming a Catholic had been an amazing shock to Jack, who had
always supposed that Frank, like himself, took the ordinary sensible
English view of religion. To be a professed unbeliever was bad form--it
was like being a Little Englander or a Radical; to be pious was equally
bad form--it resembled a violent devotion to the Union Jack. No;
religion to Jack (and he had always hitherto supposed, to Frank) was a
department of life in which one did not express any particular views:
one did not say one's prayers; one attended chapel at the proper times;
if one was musical, one occasionally went to King's on Sunday afternoon;
in the country one went to church on Sunday morning as one went to the
stables in the afternoon, and that was about all.

Frank had been, too, so extremely secretive about the whole thing. He
had marched into Jack's rooms in Jesus Lane one morning nearly a
fortnight ago.

"Come to mass at the Catholic Church," he said.

"Why, the--" began Jack.

"I've got to go. I'm a Catholic."

"_What!_"

"I became one last week."

Jack had stared at him, suddenly convinced that someone was mad. When he
had verified that it was really a fact; that Frank had placed himself
under instruction three months before, and had made his confession--(his
confession!)--on Friday, and had been conditionally baptized; when he
had certified himself of all these things, and had begun to find
cohe