endover, and he did not mean to attempt it.

One morning the squire unexpectedly plunged into an account of a German
monograph he had just received on the subject of the Johannine
authorship of the Fourth Gospel. It was almost the first occasion on
which he had touched what may strictly be called the _materiel_ of
orthodoxy in their discussions--at any rate directly. But the book was a
striking one, and in the interest of it he had clearly forgotten his
ground a little. Suddenly the man who was walking beside him interrupted
him.

'I think we ought to understand one another perhaps, Mr. Wendover,'
Robert said, speaking under a quick sense of oppression, but with his
usual dignity and bright courtesy. 'I know your opinions, of course,
from your books; you know what mine, as an honest man, must be, from the
position I hold. My conscience does not forbid me to discuss anything,
only--I am no match for you on points of scholarship, and I should just
like to say once for all, that to me, whatever else is true, the
religion of Christ is true. I am a Christian and a Christian minister.
Therefore, whenever we come to discuss what may be called Christian
evidence, I do it with reserves, which you would not have. I believe in
an Incarnation, a Resurrection, a Revelation. If there are literary
difficulties, I must want to smooth them away--you may want to make much
of them. We come to the matter from different points of view. You will
not quarrel with me for wanting to make it clear. It isn't as if we
differed slightly. We differ fundamentally--is it not so?'

The squire was walking beside him with bent shoulders, the lower lip
pushed forward, as was usual with him when he was considering a matter
with close attention, but did not mean to communicate his thoughts.

After a pause he said, with a faint inscrutable smile,--

'Your reminder is perfectly just. Naturally we all have our reserves.
Neither of us can be expected to stultify his own.'

And the talk went forward again, Robert joining in more buoyantly than
ever, perhaps because he had achieved a necessary but disagreeable thing
and got done with it.

In reality he had but been doing as the child does when it sets up its
sand-barrier against the tide.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was the beginning of April. The gorse was fast extending its golden
empire over the commons. On the sunny slopes of the copses primroses
were breaking through the hazel roots and beginning to