ure
as he had supposed at first. Both he and Lady Sunderbund professed
universalism; but while his was the universalism of one who would
simplify to the bare fundamentals of a common faith, hers was the
universalism of the collector. Religion to him was something that
illuminated the soul, to her it was something that illuminated
prayer-books. For a considerable time they followed their divergent
inclinations without any realization of their divergence. None the less
a vague doubt and dissatisfaction with the prospect before him arose to
cloud his confidence.

At first there was little or no doubt of his own faith. He was still
altogether convinced that he had to confess and proclaim God in his
life. He was as sure that God was the necessary king and saviour of
mankind and of a man's life, as he was of the truth of the Binomial
Theorem. But what began first to fade was the idea that he had been
specially called to proclaim the True God to all the world. He would
have the most amiable conference with Lady Sunderbund, and then as he
walked back to Notting Hill he would suddenly find stuck into his
mind like a challenge, Heaven knows how: "Another prophet?" Even if
he succeeded in this mission enterprise, he found himself asking, what
would he be but just a little West-end Mahomet? He would have founded
another sect, and we have to make an end to all sects. How is there to
be an end to sects, if there are still to be chapels--richly decorated
chapels--and congregations, and salaried specialists in God?

That was a very disconcerting idea. It was particularly active at night.
He did his best to consider it with a cool detachment, regardless of
the facts that his private income was just under three hundred pounds a
year, and that his experiments in cultured journalism made it extremely
improbable that the most sedulous literary work would do more than
double this scanty sum. Yet for all that these nasty, ugly, sordid facts
were entirely disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in and
squatting down, shapeless in a black corner of his mind--from which
their eyes shone out, so to speak--whenever his doubt whether he ought
to set up as a prophet at all was under consideration.

(6)

Then very suddenly on this October afternoon the situation had come to a
crisis.

He had gone to Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and drawings for
the new church in which he was to give his message to the world. They
had broug