stand them, and they knew that. It was as though he, or they, were
colour-blind. The values were all different. He was seeing one set of
objects, they another.

One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth from
their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the country's
danger, now pursued their calling in the dark. This particular evil had
always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson. The starvation which ruled
his own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity
was not his strong point. In consequence there was ever within him a
sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming
attitude of rigid disapproval. He joined the hunters, as it were,
because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was
fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to
something which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a
professional view of this particular offence. When in his walks abroad
he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and
frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
unholy sovereignty over the night. They were such a danger to the
soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the lambs
of his flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from
time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers,
so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful
indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting
temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight.
The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the
babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had
formed, of three married and two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers,
and if necessary took the babies into a creche; for those babies had a
new value to the country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held
responsible for their mothers' faults. He himself saw little of the
young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
censorious enough. But once in a way Life set him face to face with one.

On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
announced, a small