hold of, if one can. Among their fellows,
they are the men who think. One longs to help them to think to a little
more purpose.'

'What have you to give them, Robert?' asked Catherine after a pause, her
eyes bent on the child's stocking she was knitting. Her heart was full
enough already, poor soul. Oh, the bitterness of this Passion week! He
had been at her side often in church, but through all his tender silence
and consideration she had divined the constant struggle in him between
love and intellectual honesty, and it had filled her with a dumb
irritation and misery indescribable. Do what she would, wrestle with
herself as she would, there was constantly emerging in her now a note of
anger, not with Robert, but, as it were, with those malign forces of
which he was the prey.

'What have I to give them?' he repeated sadly. 'Very little, Catherine,
as it seems to me to-night. But come and see.'

His tone had a melancholy which went to her heart. In reality he was in
that state of depression which often precedes a great effort. But she
was startled by his suggestion.

'Come with you, Robert? To the meeting of a secularist club!'

'Why not? I shall be there to protest against outrage to what both you
and I hold dear. And the men are decent fellows. There will be no
disturbance.'

'What are you going to do?' she asked in a low voice.

'I have been trying to think it out,' he said with difficulty. 'I want
simply, if I can, to transfer to their minds that image of Jesus of
Nazareth which thought, and love, and reading have left upon my own. I
want to make them realise for themselves the historical character, so
far as it can be realised--to make them see for themselves the real
figure, as it went in and out amongst men--so far as our eyes can now
discern it.'

The words came quicker towards the end, while the voice sank--took the
vibrating characteristic note the wife knew so well.

'How can that help them?' she said abruptly. 'Your historical Christ,
Robert, will never win souls. If he was God, every word you speak will
insult him. If he was man, he was not a good man!'

'Come and see,' was all he said, holding out his hand to her. It was in
some sort a renewal of the scene at Les Avants, the inevitable renewal
of an offer he felt bound to make, and she felt bound to resist.

She let her knitting fall and placed her hand in his. The baby on the
rug was alternately caressing and scourging a woolly baa-lamb, whi