as to give the
following day. The packet of books, unopened, lay on his writing-table.
He took off the wrapper, and in his eager way fell to reading the first
he touched.

It was the first volume of _The Idols of the Market-place_.

Ten or twelve years before, Mr. Wendover had launched this book into a
startled and protesting England. It had been the fruit of his first
renewal of contact with English life and English ideas after his return
from Berlin. Fresh from the speculative ferment of Germany and the far
profaner scepticism of France, he had returned to a society where the
first chapter of Genesis and the theory of verbal inspiration were still
regarded as valid and important counters on the board of thought. The
result had been this book. In it each stronghold of English popular
religion had been assailed in turn, at a time when English orthodoxy was
a far more formidable thing than it is now.

The Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Gospels, St. Paul, Tradition, the
Fathers, Protestantism and Justification by Faith, the Eighteenth
Century, the Broad Church Movement, Anglican Theology--the squire had
his say about them all. And while the coolness and frankness of the
method sent a shock of indignation and horror through the religious
public, the subtle and caustic style, and the epigrams with which the
book was strewn, forced both the religious and irreligious public to
read, whether they would or no. A storm of controversy rose round the
volumes, and some of the keenest observers of English life had said at
the time, and maintained since, that the publication of the book had
made or marked an epoch.

Robert had lit on those pages in the Essay on the Gospels where the
squire fell to analysing the evidence for the Resurrection, following up
his analysis by an attempt at reconstructing the conditions out of which
the belief in 'the legend' arose. Robert began to read vaguely at first,
then to hurry on through page after page, still standing, seized at once
by the bizarre power of the style, the audacity and range of the
treatment.

Not a sound in the house. Outside, the tossing moaning December night;
inside, the faintly crackling fire, the standing figure. Suddenly it was
to Robert as though a cruel torturing hand were laid upon his inmost
being. His breath failed him; the book slipped out of his grasp; he sank
down upon his chair, his head in his hands. Oh, what a desolate
intolerable moment! Over the young ideali