l, the great religions of
the world are the stimulants by which the power at the root of things
has worked upon this sluggish instrument of human destiny. Without
religion you cannot make the will equal to its tasks. Our present
religion fails us; we must, we will have another!'

He rose and began to pace along the sands, now gently glowing in the
warm September evening, Flaxman beside him.

_A new religion!_ Of all words, the most tremendous! Flaxman pitifully
weighed against it the fraction of force fretting and surging in the
thin elastic frame beside him. He knew well, however--few better--that
the outburst was not a mere dream and emptiness. There was experience
behind it--a burning, driving experience of actual fact.

Presently Robert said, with a change of tone, 'I must have that whole
block of warehouses, Flaxman.'

'Must you?' said Flaxman, relieved by the drop from speculation to the
practical. 'Why?'

'Look here!' And sitting down again on a sand-hill overgrown with wild
grasses and mats of sea-thistle, the poor pale reformer began to draw
out the details of his scheme on its material side. Three floors of
rooms brightly furnished, well lit and warmed; a large hall for the
Sunday lectures, concerts, entertainments, and story-telling; rooms for
the boys' club; two rooms for women and girls, reached by a separate
entrance; a library and reading-room open to both sexes, well stored
with books, and made beautiful by pictures; three or four smaller rooms
to serve as committee rooms and for the purposes of the Naturalist Club
which had been started in May on the Murewell plan; and, if possible, a
gymnasium.

'_Money!_' he said, drawing up with a laugh in mid-career. 'There's the
rub, of course. But I shall manage it.'

To judge from the past, Flaxman thought it extremely likely that he
would. He studied the cabalistic lines Elsmere's stick had made in the
sand for a minute or two; then he said dryly, 'I will take the first
expense: and draw on me afterwards up to five hundred a year, for the
first four years.'

Robert turned upon him and grasped his hand.

'I do not thank you,' he said quietly, after a moment's pause; 'the work
itself will do that.'

Again they strolled on, talking, plunging into details, till Flaxman's
pulse beat as fast as Robert's; so full of infectious hope and energy
was the whole being of the man before him.

'I can take in the women and girls now,' Robert said once. 'Catherine