your neck would have been wrung as that of a
bird of ill omen."

"Why?" asked Bastin blankly. "I only said what I thought to be the
truth. The truth is better than what you call good taste."

"Then I will say what I think also to be the truth," replied Bickley,
growing furious. "It is that you use your Christianity as a cloak for
bad manners. It teaches consideration and sympathy for others of which
you seem to have none. Moreover, since you talk of the death of people's
wives, I will tell you something about your own, as a doctor, which I
can do as I never attended her. It is highly probable, in my opinion,
that she will die before Mrs. Arbuthnot, who is quite a healthy person
with a good prospect of life."

"Perhaps," said Bastin. "If so, it will be God's will and I shall not
complain" (here Bickley snorted), "though I do not see what you can know
about it. But why should you cast reflections on the early Christians
who were people of strong principle living in rough times, and had to
wage war against an established devil-worship? I know you are angry
because they smashed up the statues of Venus and so forth, but had I
been in their place I should have done the same."

"Of course you would, who doubts it? But as for the early Christians and
their iconoclastic performances--well, curse them, that's all!" and he
sprang up and left the room.

I followed him.

Let it not be supposed from the above scene that there was any
ill-feeling between Bastin and Bickley. On the contrary they were much
attached to each other, and this kind of quarrel meant no more than
the strong expression of their individual views to which they were
accustomed from their college days. For instance Bastin was always
talking about the early Christians and missionaries, while Bickley
loathed both, the early Christians because of the destruction which
they had wrought in Egypt, Italy, Greece and elsewhere, of all that was
beautiful; and the missionaries because, as he said, they were degrading
and spoiling the native races and by inducing them to wear clothes,
rendering them liable to disease. Bastin would answer that their souls
were more important than their bodies, to which Bickley replied that as
there was no such thing as a soul except in the stupid imagination of
priests, he differed entirely on the point. As it was quite impossible
for either to convince the other, there the conversation would end, or
drift into something in which they