Norman
nose was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and
body.

When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected
the angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so
much as this.

"You see," said the stumbling spokesman, "I was angry with him when he
insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
the police are all trying to stop it."

Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I thought people in
our time were supposed to respect each other's religion."

Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on
the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face only
answered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."

If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have
snorted with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed
knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were
rebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything
that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and
virtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was
at present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the
material objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of
"her generous ribbon" or "her chivalrous gloves" or "her merciful
shoe-buckle," it would not have seemed to him nonsense.

He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
momentarily softened and a little saddened also. "It won't do, you
know," she said; "you can't find out the truth in that way. There are
such heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays,
and they all think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian."

MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly
to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.

"The time's gone by for all that," she went on; "you can't find out the
real thing like that--if there is really anything to find----" and
she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough
in her emotions.

"Our object," said Turnbull, shortly