n in silence.

"The truth is, my boy," he said a minute later, "that I'm a converted man,
and it isn't everyone who can say that--nor do I wish everyone to be
converted, because it's a ghastly business preparing for the operation. It
isn't everyone who needs it--only those self-willed, devilish, stand-off,
proud people, who have to be braised in a mortar and pulverised to atoms.
Then, when you are all to bits, you can be built up. Do you remember that
stone we broke the other day? Well, I was a melted blob of stone, and then
I was crystallised--now I'm full of eyes within! And the best of it is that
they are little living eyes, and not sparkling flints--they see, they don't
reflect! At least I think so; and I don't think trouble is brewing for me
again--though that is always the danger!"

I was very deeply moved by this, and said something about being grateful.

"Oh, not that," said Father Payne; "you don't know what fun it has been to
me to tell you. That's the sort of thing that I want to get into one of my
novels, but I can't manage it. But the moral is, if I may say so: Be afraid
of self-pity and dignity and self-respect--don't be afraid of happiness and
simplicity and kindness. Give yourself away with both hands. It's easy for
me to talk, because I have been loaded with presents ever since: the clouds
drop fatness--a rich but expressive image that!"

XXX

OF BLOODSUCKERS

"I'm feeling low to-night," said Father Payne in answer to a question about
his prolonged silence. "I'm not myself: virtue has gone out of me--I'm in
the clutches of a bloodsucker."

"Old debts with compound interest?" said Rose cheerfully.

"Yes," said Father Payne with a frown; "old emotional I.O.U.'s. I didn't
know what I was putting my name to."

"A man or a woman?" said Rose.

"Thank God, it's a man!" said Father Payne. "Female bloodsuckers are worse
still. A man, at all events, only wants the blood; a woman wants the
pleasure of seeing you wince as well!"

"It sounds very tragic," said Kaye.

"No, it's not tragic," said Father Payne; "there would be something
dignified about that! It's only unutterably low and degrading. Come, I'll
tell you about it. It will do me good to get it off my chest.

"It is one of my old pupils," Father Payne went on. "He once got into
trouble about money, and I paid his debts--he can't forgive me that!"

"Does he want you to pay some more?" said Rose.

"Yes, he does," said Father Payne, "but