meant to tell you, Sir, of one, thing-I have, made up my mind to
take Orders.'

'You have? When?'

'Quite lately. So that fixes me, I suppose, to come back for divinity
lectures in the autumn.'

Mr. Grey said nothing for a while, and they strolled in and out of the
great shadows thrown by the elms across their path.

'You feel no difficulties in the way?' he asked at last, with a certain
quick brusqueness of manner.

'No,' said Robert, eagerly. 'I never had any. Perhaps,' he added with
a sudden humility, 'it is because I have never gone deep enough. What
I believe might have been worth more if I had had more struggle; but it
has all seemed so plain.'

The young voice speaking with hesitation and reserve, and yet with a
deep inner, conviction, was pleasant to hear. Mr. Grey turned toward it,
and the great eyes under the furrowed brow had a peculiar gentleness of
expression.

'You will probably be very happy in the life,' he said. 'The Church
wants men of your sort.'

But through all the sympathy of the tone Robert was conscious of a veil
between them. He knew, of course, pretty much what it was, and with a
sudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break through
it and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others,
wide as was the intellectual difference between them. But the tutor's
reticence and the younger man's respect prevented it.

When the unlucky second class was actually proclaimed to the world,
Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother.
No one knew better than he what Elsmere's gifts were. It was absurd
that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. '_Le
clericalisme, voila l'ennemi!_' was about the gist of Langham's mood
during the days that followed on the class list.

Elsmere, however, did not divulge his intention of taking Orders to
him till ten days afterward, when he had carried off Langham to stay
at Harden, and he and his old tutor were smoking in his mother's little
garden one moonlit night.

When he had finished his statement Langham stood still a moment,
watching the wreaths of smoke as they curled and vanished. The curious
interest in Elsmere's career, which during a certain number of months
had made him almost practical, almost energetic, had disappeared. He was
his own languid, paradoxical self.

'Well, after all,' he said at last, very slowly, 'the difficulty lies
in preaching anything. One may as wel