fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing
effect. Here at last was a new type--a man with clean pages before
him--young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful
clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his
instincts were apparently correct. His manners were hoydenish, but
there was nothing of the clown about him. She asked him a direct
question concerning himself.

"Tell me," she said, "what you really are. A worker, a student--or have
you a trade?"

He flushed up to his brows.

"I was brought up" he said, in a low tone, "for the ministry. It was no
choice of mine. I had an uncle and guardian who ruled our household as
he ruled everybody and everything with which he came in contact."

She was puzzled. To her the word sounded political.

"The ministry?"

"Yes. You remember when you first saw me? It was my first appearance.
I was to have been chosen pastor of that church."

"Oh!"

She looked at him now with something like amazement. This, then,
accounted for the sombreness of his clothes and his little strip of
white tie. She had only the vaguest ideas as to the conduct of those
various sects to be met with in English villages, but she had certainly
believed that the post of preacher was filled indifferently by any
member of the congregation, and she had looked upon his presence in the
pulpit on that last Sunday as an accident. To associate him with such
an occupation permanently seemed to her little short of the ridiculous.
She laughed softly, showing, for the first time, her brilliantly white
teeth, and his cheeks were stained with scarlet.

"I do not know why you laugh," he said, with a note of fierceness in his
tone. "It is the part of my life which is behind me. I was brought up
to it, and traditions are hard to break away from. I have been obliged
to live in a little village, to constrain my life between the narrowest
limits, to watch ignorance, and suffer prejudices as deeply rooted as
the hills. But all the same, it is nothing to laugh at. The thing
itself is great and good enough--it is the people who are so hopeless.
No, there is nothing to laugh at," he cried, with a sudden little burst
of excitement, "but may God help the children whose eyes He has opened
and who yet have to pass their lives on the smallest treadmill of the
world."

"You" she whispered, "have escaped."

"I have escaped," he murmured, with a sudden pallor, "but not