ch him every Sunday in Lady
Sunderbund's church, wearing Lady Sunderbund's vestments?

Before him he saw an empty seat. The question was so immense and
conclusive, it was so clearly a choice for all the rest of his life
between God and the dear things of this world, that he felt he could not
decide it upon his legs. He sat down, threw an arm along the back of the
seat and drummed with his fingers.

If the answer was "yes" then it was decidedly a pity that he had not
stayed in the church. It was ridiculous to strain at the cathedral gnat
and then swallow Lady Sunderbund's decorative Pantechnicon.

For the first time, Scrope definitely regretted his apostasy.

A trivial matter, as it may seem to the reader, intensified that regret.
Three weeks ago Borrowdale, the bishop of Howeaster, had died, and
Scrope would have been the next in rotation to succeed him on the
bench of bishops. He had always looked forward to the House of Lords,
intending to take rather a new line, to speak more, and to speak more
plainly and fully upon social questions than had hitherto been the
practice of his brethren. Well, that had gone....

(9)

Regrets were plain now. The question before his mind was growing clear;
whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and
his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary
fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund
offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social
status of his wife and daughters. In which case it was clear to him
he would have to go to great lengths and exercise very considerable
subtlety--and magnetism--in the management of Lady Sunderbund....

He found himself composing a peculiar speech to her, very frank and
revealing, and one that he felt would dominate her thoughts.... She
attracted him oddly.... At least this afternoon she had attracted
him....

And repelled him....

A wholesome gust of moral impatience stirred him. He smacked the back of
the seat hard, as though he smacked himself.

No. He did not like it....

A torn sunset of purple and crimson streamed raggedly up above and
through the half stripped trecs of Kensington Gardens, and he found
himself wishing that Heaven would give us fewer sublimities in sky and
mountain and more in our hearts. Against the background of darkling
trees and stormily flaming sky a girl was approaching him. There was
little to be seen of her but her o