ts the worldly person hollow."

"They dissipate their secret bread into crumbs, in fact," said Ishmael
with a laugh.

The Parson nodded. "Exactly--and stale crumbs at that. I wonder--it's
easy to judge after all, and, as I once tried to tell you, it means
something different to every man. Tolerance--the deeper tolerance which
is charity ... if life doesn't teach one that, it's all been so much
waste. Who am I and who is anyone to despise the means by which another
man lives? Some of us find our relief in action, in the actual sweat of
our bodies; some find it in set hours and rows of little devotional
books--the technique of the thing, so to speak. And some of us find it
out of doors and some within narrow walls--some find it in goodness and
some only by sin and shame.... One shouldn't let other people's
salvation rub one up the wrong way."

"It all goes to make the pattern, as Killigrew would say," suggested
Ishmael thoughtfully.

"When I was very young," went on Ishmael after a pause, "I think I lived
by the Spirit--much more so than I can now, Da Boase. I seem to have
gone dead, somehow," Boase nodded, but said nothing. "And then it was
Cloom that meant life to me when I came back here and started in on it.
Then it was love!"

He spoke the word baldly, looking away from the Parson. "Then it was
love!" he repeated; "and now it's just emptiness, a sort of going on
blindly from day to day. It's as though one were pressing through dark
water instead of air, and one could only struggle on and let it go over
one's head and hope that some time one will come out the other side."

"Don't forget," said Boase gently, "that no one can see a pattern when
he is in the middle of it. It all seems confused and without scheme
while we are living in the midst of it; it's only on looking back that
we see it fall into shape."

"And does it, always?"

"I firmly believe so. It rests with us to make it as beautiful a pattern
as possible, but a pattern it is bound to make. And a terribly
inevitable one, each curve leading to the next, as though we were
spiders, spinning our web out of ourselves as we go...."

"I suppose so," said Ishmael listlessly. Boase looked at him keenly. He
could hardly believe that Cloom meant nothing to Ishmael; he was certain
that there balm must eventually be found. He glanced out of the window,
and saw that the rain had left off and a still pallor held the air.

"Come out for a turn with me," he sugges