Cambridge he had gone to some meeting of the kind. There had been
impromptu prayers, ghastly pictures of hell-fire, appeals to the
undergraduates to save themselves at once lest it be too late,
confessions and appeals for mercy. The memory of that evening still
filled him with physical nausea. It was to him as though he had seen
some gross indecent act in public or witnessed some horrible cruelty.

Maggie had told him very little about the Chapel and its doings, and he
had shrunk from asking her any questions, but everything that was odd
and unusual in her behaviour he attributed to her months under that
influence. As he stared at the flaunting pink sheet he felt as though
it were a direct personal assault on himself and his church.

And yet he knew that he could do nothing. Once before there had been
something of the kind in Skeaton and he had tried with others to stop
it. He had failed utterly; the civic authorities in Skeaton seemed
almost to approve of these horrors. He looked at the thing once more
and then turned back towards home. Something must be done... Something
must be done ... but, as on so many earlier occasions in his life, he
could face no clear course of action.

That Saturday evening he tried to change his sermon. He had determined
to deliver a very fine address on "Brotherly Love" and then, most
fortunately, he had discovered a five-years' old sermon that would,
with a little adaptation, exactly fit the situation.

To-night he was sick of his adaptation. The sermon had not been a good
one at the first, and now it was a tattered thing of shreds and
patches. He tried to add to it some sentences about the approaching
"Revival." No sentences would come. What a horrible fortnight it had
been! He looked back upon his district visiting, his meetings, his
choir-practices with disgust. Something had come in between himself and
his people. Perhaps the relationship had never been very real? Founded
on jollity. An eagerness to accept anybody's mood for one's own if only
that meant jollity. What had he thought, standing in the puddle that
afternoon? That they were all dead, he and his congregation and God,
all dead together? He sank into his chair, picked up the Church Times,
and fell asleep.

Next morning as he walked into the choir this extraordinary impression
that his congregation was dead persisted. As he recited the
"Confession" he looked about him. There was Mr. Maxse, and there Miss
Purves. Every one