ranged. Hugh could
always go and dine in the hall of his college, and be certain of
finding there a quiet good-fellowship and a pleasant tolerance. But he
had not as yet mastered the current of little incidents which furnish
so much of the conversation of small societies: allusions to facts
familiar to all beside himself were perpetually being made; and he knew
that nothing is so tiresome as a would-be sympathetic questioner, who
does not understand the precise lie of the ground. He had as yet no
definite work; a literary task in which he was shortly to be engaged
had not as yet begun; the materials had not been placed in his hands.
Thus compelled by circumstances to pass through a period of enforced
retreat, Hugh resolved upon a certain course of action. He determined
to put down in writing, for his own instruction and benefit, the
precise position he held in thought--his hopes, his desires, his
beliefs. He set to work, it must be confessed, in a melancholy mood,
the melancholy that is inseparable from the position of a man who has
lived a very full and active life, and from whom the burden of
activities is suddenly lifted. Though the lifting of the weight was an
immense relief, and though he could often summon back cheerfulness by
reflecting how entire his freedom was, and how troublesomely he would
have been occupied if he had still held his professional position, yet
the mere fact that there was no longer any necessity to brace his
energies and faculties to meet some particular call of duty, gave him
spaces of a flaccid dreariness, in which his accustomed literary work
palled on him; one could not read or write for ever; and so he set
himself, as I have said, to compose a memorandum, a _symbol_, so to
speak, of his moral and intellectual faith.

He was surprised, as soon as he began his task, to find how much of
what he had believed to be certainties shrank and dwindled. A perfect
sincerity with himself was the only possible condition under which such
a work was worth undertaking. A sincerity which should resolutely
discard all that was merely traditional and customary, should emphasise
nothing, should regard nothing as proved, in which hope outran
scientific certainty.

He found then that his creed began with a deep and abiding faith in
God; he believed, that is, in the existence of an all-pervading,
all-powerful Will, lying behind and in the scheme of things.

Side by side with this belief, and inextric