of
compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at
all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of
hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden wall, and
across the corner of the churchyard to the vestry and the perennial
services and sacraments of the church.

But he never talked to me privately of religion. He left that for my
cousin and Mr. Siddons to do or not to do as they felt disposed, and in
those silences of his I may have found another confirmation of my
growing feeling that religion was from one point of view a thing
somehow remote and unreal, claiming unjustifiable interventions in the
detailed conduct of my life, and from another a peculiar concern of my
father's and Mr. Siddons', to which they went--through the vestry,
changing into strange garments on the way.

Sec. 4

I do not want to leave the impression which my last section may have
conveyed that at the age of thirteen or thereabouts I walked about with
Mr. Siddons discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner and
maintaining theological positions. That particular conversation, you
must imagine with Mr. Siddons somewhat monologuing, addressing himself
not only to my present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to my
absent father. What I may have said or not said, whether I did indeed
dispute or merely and by a kind of accident implied objections, I have
altogether forgotten long ago.

A boy far more than a man is mentally a discontinuous being. The
drifting chaos of his mind makes its experimental beginnings at a
hundred different points and in a hundred different spirits and
directions; here he flashes into a concrete realization, here into a
conviction unconsciously incompatible; here is something originally
conceived, here something uncritically accepted. I know that I
criticized Mr. Siddons quite acutely, and disbelieved in him. I know
also that I accepted all sorts of suggestions from him quite
unhesitatingly and that I did my utmost to satisfy his standards and
realize his ideals of me.

Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses and dreams
which came to the surface in the solitudes of the Park was my
Siddonsesque self, a high-minded and clean and brave English boy,
conscientiously loyal to queen and country, athletic and a good
sportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form." Mr. Siddons made me
aware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surv