"Thank you."

"Oh, Ellen!"

Chichester went to the door, and Stepton heard the words, "Nobody, you
understand," following on a subdued murmuring.

"And Mr. Harding, sir?" said the maid's voice outside.

"Mr. Harding won't come to-day. That will do, Ellen."

The professor heard steps descending. His host shut the door and
returned.

"You typed it for your own use?" said Stepton.

"That sermon? Yes. I wished to keep it by me as a record."

He sat down, and poured out the tea.

"A record of an imagined experience. Exactly. Then why not publish?"

"It is not fiction."

"Well, it isn't fact."

The professor drank his tea, looking at his host narrowly over the cup.

"Do you say such an experience as that described in my sermon is
impossible?"

"Do you say it is possible?"

"If I were to say so would you believe me?"

"Certainly not, unless I could make an investigation and personally
satisfy myself that what you said was true. You wouldn't expect anything
else, I'm sure."

"You can believe nothing on the mere word of another?"

"Very little. I am an investigator. I look for proof."

"With your pencil in one hand, your note-book in the other."

In Chichester's last remark there was a note of sarcasm which thoroughly
roused Stepton, for it sounded like the sarcasm of knowledge addressed
to ignorance. Stepton had a temper. This touch of superiority, not
vulgar, but very definite, fell on it like a lash.

"Now I'll go for the reverend gentleman of St. Joseph's!" he thought.

And for a moment he forgot his aim in remembering himself. Afterward,
in thinking matters over, he offered a pinch of incense at the altar
of his egoism.

"So, the modern clergyman still believes in slip-slop, does he?" he
exclaimed in his most aggressive manner. "Even now hasn't he learnt the
value of the matter-of-fact? The clergyman is the doctor of the soul,
isn't he? And the doctor, isn't he the clergyman of the body? I wonder,
I do wonder, how long the average doctor would keep together his practice
if he worked with no more precision than the average clergyman. The
contempt of the pencil and note-book! The contempt of proper care in
getting together and coordinating facts! The contempt of proof--the
appeal to reason! And so we get to the contempt of reason. And let me
tell you--" he struck the tea-table with his lean hand till the curate's
cups jumped--"that scarcely ever have I heard a sermon in which was not
to be found