t some loving heart
whereon to rest.' . . .

Lancelot sighed. 'I am not a child, but a man; I want not a mother
to pet, but a man to rule me.'

Slowly his companion raised his thin hand, and pointed to the
crucifix, which stood at the other end of the apartment.

'Behold him!' and he bowed his head once more . . . and Lancelot, he
knew not why, did the same . . . and yet in an instant he threw his
head up proudly, and answered with George Fox's old reply to the
Puritans,--

'I want a live Christ, not a dead one. . . . That is noble . . .
beautiful . . . it may be true. . . . But it has no message for
me.'

'He died for you.'

'I care for the world, and not myself.'

'He died for the world.'

'And has deserted it, as folks say now, and become--an absentee,
performing His work by deputies. . . . Do not start; the blasphemy
is not mine, but those who preach it. No wonder that the owners of
the soil think it no shame to desert their estates, when preachers
tell them that He to whom they say, all power is given in heaven and
earth, has deserted His.'

'What would you have, my dear sir?' asked the father.

'What the Jews had. A king of my nation, and of the hearts of my
nation, who would teach soldiers, artists, craftsmen, statesmen,
poets, priests, if priests there must be. I want a human lord, who
understands me and the millions round me, pities us, teaches us,
orders our history, civilisation, development for us. I come to
you, full of manhood, and you send me to a woman. I go to the
Protestants, full of desires to right the world--and they begin to
talk of the next life, and give up this as lost!'

A quiet smile lighted up the thin wan face, full of unfathomable
thoughts; and he replied, again half to himself,--

'Am I God, to kill or to make alive, that thou sendest to me to
recover a man of his leprosy? Farewell. You shall see your cousin
here at noon to-morrow. You will not refuse my blessing, or my
prayers, even though they be offered to a mother?'

'I will refuse nothing in the form of human love.' And the father
blessed him fervently, and he went out. . . .

'What a man!' said he to himself, 'or rather the wreck of what a
man! Oh, for such a heart, with the thews and sinews of a truly
English brain!'

Next day he met Luke in that room. Their talk was short and sad.
Luke was on the point of entering an order devoted especially to the
worship of the Bl