"I regret that I must," answered Gregory.

"Without mentioning names, then, I say that she is not a fit person to
bring a suit for divorce!"

"You say that?" said Gregory. "You----"

He could not go on.

"You will not move me, Mr. Vigil," said the Rector, with a grim little
smile. "I have my duty to do."

Gregory recovered possession of himself with an effort.

"You have said that which no one but a clergyman could say with
impunity," he said freezingly. "Be so good as to explain yourself."

"My explanation," said Mr. Barter, "is what I have seen with my own
eyes."

He raised those eyes to Gregory. Their pupils were contracted to
pin-points, the light-grey irises around had a sort of swimming glitter,
and round these again the whites were injected with blood.

"If you must know, with my own eyes I've seen her in that very
conservatory over there kissing a man."

Gregory threw up his hand.

"How dare you!" he whispered.

Again Mr. Barter's humorous under-lip shot out.

"I dare a good deal more than that, Mr. Vigil," he said, "as you will
find; and I say this to you--stop this divorce, or I'll stop it myself!"

Gregory turned to the window. When he came back he was outwardly calm.

"You have been guilty of indelicacy," he said. "Continue in your
delusion, think what you like, do what you like. The matter will go on.
Good-evening, sir."

And turning on his heel, he left the room.

Mr. Barter stepped forward. The words, "You have been guilty of
indelicacy," whirled round his brain till every blood vessel in his face
and neck was swollen to bursting, and with a hoarse sound like that of
an animal in pain he pursued Gregory to the door. It was shut in his
face. And since on taking Orders he had abandoned for ever the use of
bad language, he was very near an apoplectic fit. Suddenly he became
aware that Mrs. Pendyce was looking at him from the conservatory door.
Her face was painfully white, her eyebrows lifted, and before that look
Mr. Barter recovered a measure of self-possession.

"Is anything the matter, Mr. Barter?"

The Rector smiled grimly.

"Nothing, nothing," he said. "I must ask you to excuse me, that's all.
I've a parish matter to attend to."

When he found himself in the drive, the feeling of vertigo and
suffocation passed, but left him unrelieved. He had, in fact, happened
on one of those psychological moments which enable a man's true nature
to show itself. Accustomed to say of himsel