rally, Mr. Wendover,' he said at last, and his tone had a
half-defiant, half-nervous energy, 'you have given your best attention
all these years to the Christian problems.'

'Naturally,' said the Squire dryly. Then, as his companion still seemed
to wait, keenly expectant, he resumed, with something cynical in the
smile which accompanied the words,--

'But I have no wish to infringe our convention.'

'A convention was it?' replied Elsmere flushing. 'I think I only wanted
to make my own position clear and prevent misunderstanding. But it is
impossible that I should be indifferent to the results of thirty years'
such work as you can give to so great a subject.'

The Squire drew himself up a little under his cloak and seemed to
consider. His tired eyes, fixed on the spring lane before them, saw in
reality only the long retrospects of the past. Then a light broke in
them--a light of battle. He turned to the man beside him, and his sharp
look swept over him from head to foot. Well, if he would have it,
let him have it. He had been contemptuously content so far to let the
subject be. But Mr. Wendover, in spite of his philosophy, had never been
proof all his life against an anti-clerical instinct worthy almost of a
Paris municipal councillor. In spite of his fatigue there woke in him
a kind of cruel whimsical pleasure at the notion of speaking, once
for all, what he conceived to be the whole bare truth to this clever,
attractive dreamer, to the young fellow who thought he could condescend
to science from the standpoint of the Christian miracles!

'Results?' he said interrogatively. 'Well, as you will understand, it is
tolerably difficult to summarize such a mass at a moment's notice. But
I can give you the lines of my last volumes, if it would interest you to
hear them.

That walk prolonged itself far beyond Mr. Wendover's original intention.
There was something in the situation, in Elsmere's comments, or
arguments, or silences which after a while banished the scholar's sense
of exhaustion and made him oblivious of the country distances. No man
feels another's soul quivering and struggling in his grasp without
excitement, let his nerve and his self-restraint be what they may.

As for Elsmere, that hour and a half, little as he realized it at the
time, represented the turning-point of life. He listened, he suggested,
he put in an acute remark here, an argument there, such as the Squire
had often difficulty in meeting. Eve