not such as Leila would have
approved.

IX

When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of
that member is liable to become lonely. But Pierson, who had been lonely
fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and
from it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this
routine did not bring him into touch with life. After all he saw people
when they were born, when they married, when they died. He helped them
when they wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children
Bible stories on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need
with soup and bread from his soup kitchen. He never spared himself in
any way, and his ears were always at the service of their woes. And yet
he did not understand them, and they knew that. It was as though he, or
they, were colour-blind. The values were all different. He was seeing
one set of objects, they another.

One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth
from their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the
country's danger, now pursued their calling in the dark. This particular
evil had always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson. The starvation
which ruled his own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view
and severity was not his strong point. In consequence there was ever
within him a sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on
beneath that seeming attitude of rigid disapproval. He joined the
hunters, as it were, because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own
instincts, for he was fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of
being lenient to a sin, to something which God abhorred: He was, as it
were, bound to take a professional view of this particular offence. When
in his walks abroad he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously
purse his lips, and frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend
them such power, such unholy sovereignty over the night. They were such
a danger to the soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a
danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters