e great blow he has sustained this day in the
wreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left him quivering to the centre of
his being with resentment that strikes back.

"Think again yourself. Ask yourself whether the Deity who creates,
preserves, blesses, punishes, slays, and raises up, is the natural outcome
of man's need of such a Being, or His own desire of Himself? And which
conception is the greater--that the God in whom you Churchmen and the
millions of lay-folk who recognise you as Divinely-appointed teachers
believe, should have commanded, 'Let the universe exist,' and have been
obeyed, or that the stupendous pigmy Man should have dared to say, 'Let
there be God,' and so created Him?"

He laughs jarringly as he knocks the ashes out of the blackened pipe upon
the corner of the window-ledge.

"Give credit to the human imagination and the human will for inventing a
personage so useful to the Christian Churches as the Devil. For as in the
beginning it was necessary for Man to build up Heaven and set his God
therein, so, to throw His unimaginable purity and inconceivable perfection
into yet more glorious relief, it was required that Hell should be delved
out and the objective personality of Satan conceived and kennelled there,
and given just sufficient power to pay the marplot where the Divine plans
are concerned, and just enough malevolence to find amusement in the
occupation. What should we do, where should we be, without our Satanic
_souffre-douleur_--our horned scapegoat, our black puppet, without whose
suggestions we should never have erred, whose wooden head we bang when
things go wrong with us," says Saxham bitterly. He reaches out a hand for
the tobacco-pouch and his glance falls upon the day's issue of the _Siege
Gazette_ lying on the parquet linoleum, where it has fallen from his hand
a little while ago. He stoops and picks it up, and offers it to Julius.

"There's the announcement of an engagement here----" He smooths the
crumpled sheet, holds it under the Chaplain's eye, and points to the two
last paragraphs of the "Social Jottings" column. "Take it as an
instance.... Did Heaven play the matchmaker here, or has Hell had a finger
in the matrimonial pie? Or has the blind and crazy chance that governs
this desolate world for me, tipped the balance in favour of one young
rake, who may be saved and purified and renewed by such a marriage, while
his elder in iniquity is doomed to be wrecked upon it, ruined by i