that
empty sheet of paper he tried to do the hardest thing a man can do--to
see himself as others see him; and met with such success as one might
expect--harking at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his
own conscience; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had
possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.
This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his
flock had made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy
and the bitter disillusionment it had brought. A sense of having lost
caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from him,
dusty and unreal. He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling
from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent,
rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after day, year after
year. Had they ever been quite real? Well, he had shed them now, and
was to move out into life illumined by the great reality-death! And
taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.

XI

1

The last Sunday, sunny and bright! Though he did not ask her to go,
Gratian went to every Service that day. And the sight of her, after this
long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson more than
anything else. He had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking
from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
expression of regret. In the last minute of his last sermon he would
tell them! He went through the day in a sort of dream. Truly proud and
sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike, made no
attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who had fallen
away. He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that
he was going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in the
scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his nature. It
was all or nothing. But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality, did
not perhaps even feel it yet. For so beautiful a summer evening the
congregation was large. In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and
curiosity still rife. The writers of the letters, anonymous and
otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had
done, but in justifying to themse