e had been no need for this secrecy. Of the
other four books, by Sayce, Budge, Smith, and Lenormant, three indeed
revealed themselves to be published under religious auspices. As for
Renan, he might have known that the name would be meaningless to Alice.
The feeling that he himself was not much wiser in this matter than his
wife may have led him to pass over the learned text-books on Chaldean
antiquity, and even the volume of Renan which appeared to be devoted
to Oriental inscriptions, and take up his other book, entitled in
the translation, "Recollections of my Youth." This he rather glanced
through, at the outset, following with a certain inattention the
introductory sketches and essays, which dealt with an unfamiliar, and,
to his notion, somewhat preposterous Breton racial type. Then, little by
little, it dawned upon him that there was a connected story in all this;
and suddenly he came upon it, out in the open, as it were. It was
the story of how a deeply devout young man, trained from his earliest
boyhood for the sacred office, and desiring passionately nothing but
to be worthy of it, came to a point where, at infinite cost of pain to
himself and of anguish to those dearest to him, he had to declare that
he could no longer believe at all in revealed religion.

Theron Ware read this all with an excited interest which no book had
ever stirred in him before. Much of it he read over and over again, to
make sure that he penetrated everywhere the husk of French habits of
thought and Catholic methods in which the kernel was wrapped. He broke
off midway in this part of the book to go out to the kitchen to dinner,
and began the meal in silence. To Alice's questions he replied briefly
that he was preparing himself for the evening's prayer-meeting. She
lifted her brows in such frank surprise at this that he made a further
and somewhat rambling explanation about having again taken up the work
on his book--the book about Abraham.

"I thought you said you'd given that up altogether," she remarked.

"Well," he said, "I WAS discouraged about it for a while. But a man
never does anything big without getting discouraged over and over again
while he's doing it. I don't say now that I shall write precisely
THAT book--I'm merely reading scientific works about the period, just
now--but if not that, I shall write some other book. Else how will you
get that piano?" he added, with an attempt at a smile.

"I thought you had given that up