somewhere the preacher's contempt for reason, the bread of
the intellect of man."

"The soul is not the intellect."

"Don't you think it higher?"

"I do."

"And so you put it on slops!"

The professor got up from his chair, and began to sidle up and down the
small room.

"You put it on slops, as if it were a thing with a disordered stomach.
That's your way of showing it respect. You approach the shrine with an
offering of water gruel. Now look ye here!"--The professor paused beside
the tea-table--"The soul wants its bread, depends upon it, as much as
the body, and the church that is free with the loaves is the church to
get a real hold on real men. Flummery is no good to anybody. Rhetoric's
no good to anybody. Claptrap and slipslop only make heads swim and
stomachs turn. The pencil and note-book, observation and the taking down
of it, these bring knowledge to the doors of men. And when you sneer at
them, you sneer at bread, on the eating of which--or its equivalent,
basis-nourishment--life depends."

"I wonder whether you, and such as you, really know on what the true life
of the soul depends," said Chichester, with an almost dreadful quietness.

The professor sat down again.

"Such as I?" he said. "You are good enough to do me the honor of putting
me in a class?"

"As you have so far honored me," returned Chichester.

"Ha!" ejaculated Stepton.

He had quite got the better of his egoism, but he by no means regretted
his outburst.

"Do you claim to stand outside the ranks of the clergy?" he asked.

"Do you claim to stand outside the ranks of the scientists?"

"Oh, dear, no. And now--you?"

Chichester said nothing for a moment. Then, lifting up his head, and
gazing at the professor with a sort of sternness of determination, he
said:

"Remember this! You yourself told me that in a crowd of a thousand you
must have fixed your attention on me."

For a moment the professor had it in his mind to say that this statement
of his had been a lie invented to make an impression on Chichester. But
he resisted the temptation to score--and lose. He preferred not to score,
and to win, if possible.

"I did," he said.

"Could this be so if I were like other men, other clergymen?"

"Well, then, what is the mighty difference between you and your reverend
brethren--between you, let us say, and your rector, Mr. Harding?"

Very casually and jerkily the professor threw out this question.

Not casually did Chichest