deeply and easily
affected by the great historic existences about him. But when the Oxford
man or the ex-official of one of the most venerable and decorous of
societies protested, the believer, or, if you will, the enthusiast, put
the protest by.

And so the dream gathered substance and stayed with him, till at last he
found himself at his own door. As he closed it behind him, Catherine
came out into the pretty old hall from the dining-room.

'Robert, have you walked all the way?'

'Yes. I came along the Embankment. Such a beautiful evening!'

He slipped his arm inside hers, and they mounted the stairs together.
She glanced at him wistfully. She was perfectly aware that these months
were to him months of incessant travail of spirit, and she caught at
this moment the old strenuous look of eye and brow she knew so well. A
year ago, and every thought of his mind had been open to her--and
now--she herself had shut them out--but her heart sank within her.

She turned and kissed him. He bent his head fondly over her. But
inwardly all the ardour of his mood collapsed at the touch of her. For
the protests of a world in arms can be withstood with joy, but the
protest that steals into your heart, that takes love's garb and uses
love's ways--_there_ is the difficulty!

CHAPTER XXXIII

But Robert was some time in finding his opening, in realising any
fraction of his dream. At first he tried work under the Broad Church
vicar to whom Grey had introduced him. He undertook some
rent-collecting, and some evening lectures on elementary science to boys
and men. But after a while he began to feel his position false and
unsatisfactory. In truth, his opinions were in the main identical with
those of the vicar under whom he was acting. But Mr. Vernon was a Broad
Churchman, belonged to the Church Reform movement, and thought it
absolutely necessary to 'keep things going,' and by a policy of prudent
silence and gradual expansion from within, to save the great 'plant' of
the Establishment from falling wholesale into the hands of the High
Churchmen. In consequence he was involved, as Robert held, in endless
contradictions and practical falsities of speech and action. His large
church was attended by a handful of some fifty to a hundred persons.
Vernon could not preach what he did believe, and would not preach, more
than was absolutely necessary, what he did not believe. He was
hard-working and kind-hearted, but the perpetual divor