rrupt him and nothing to embarrass him, and so he was able to
set out everything very clearly and convincingly. There was perhaps a
disposition to digress into rather voluminous subordinate explanations,
on such themes, for instance, as sacramentalism, whereon he found
himself summarizing Frazer's Golden Bough, which the Chasters'
controversy had first obliged him to read, and upon the irrelevance of
the question of immortality to the process of salvation. But the reality
of his eclaircissement was very different from anything he prepared in
these anticipations.

Tea had been finished and put away, and the family was disposed about
the dining-room engaged in various evening occupations; Phoebe sat at
the table working at some mathematical problem, Clementina was reading
with her chin on her fist and a frown on her brow; Lady Ella, Miriam and
Daphne were busy making soft washing cloths for the wounded; Lady
Ella had brought home the demand for them from the Red Cross centre
in Burlington House. The family was all downstairs in the dining-room
because the evening was chilly, and there were no fires upstairs yet
in the drawing-room. He came into the room and exchanged greetings with
Lady Ella. Then he stood for a time surveying his children. Phoebe, he
noted, was a little flushed; she put passion into her work; on the whole
she was more like Eleanor than any other of them. Miriam knitted with a
steady skill. Clementina's face too expressed a tussle. He took up one
of the rough-knit washing-cloths upon the side-table, and asked how many
could be made in an hour. Then he asked some idle obvious question
about the fire upstairs. Clementina made an involuntary movement; he was
disturbing her. He hovered for a moment longer. He wanted to catch his
wife's eye and speak to her first. She looked up, but before he could
convey his wish for a private conference with her, she smiled at him and
then bent over her work again.

He went into the back study and lit his gas fire. Hitherto he had always
made a considerable explosion when he did so, but this time by taking
thought and lighting his match before he turned on the gas he did it
with only a gentle thud. Then he lit his reading-lamp and pulled down
the blind--pausing for a time to look at the lit dressmaker's opposite.
Then he sat down thoughtfully before the fire. Presently Ella would come
in and he would talk to her. He waited a long time, thinking only weakly
and inconsecutive