u mean?"

"When you stood up--Did you say anything?..."

Frank looked at him bewildered.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Mr. Parham-Carter did not quite know what he had meant himself. It was a
sensation come and gone, in an instant, as Frank had moved ... a
sensation which I suppose some people would call "psychical"--a
sensation as if a shock had vibrated for one moment through every part
of his own being, and of the pleasant little warm room where he was
sitting. He looked at the other, dazed for a second or two, but there
was nothing. Those two steady black eyes looked at him in a humorous
kind of concern....

He stood up himself.

"It was nothing," he said. "I think I must be getting sleepy."

He put out his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "Oh! I'll come and see you as far as the gate."

Frank looked at him a second.

"I say," he said; "I suppose you've never thought of becoming a
Catholic?"

"My dear chap--"

"No! Well, all right.... oh! don't bother to come to the gate."

"I'm coming. It may be locked."

* * * * *

Mr. Parham-Carter stood looking after Frank's figure even after it had
passed along the dark shop fronts and was turning the corner towards
Turner Road. Then it went under the lamplight, and disappeared.

It was a drizzling, cold night, and he himself was bareheaded; he felt
the moisture run down his forehead, but it didn't seem to be happening
to him. On his right rose up the big parish-hall where the
entertainments were held, and beyond it, the east end of the great
church, dark now and tenantless; and he felt the wet woodwork of the
gate grasped in his fingers.

He did not quite know what was happening to him but everything seemed
different. A hundred thoughts had passed through his mind during the
last half hour. It had occurred to him that he ought to have asked
Guiseley to come to the clergy-house and lodge there for a bit while
things were talked over; that he ought, tactfully, to have offered to
lend him money, to provide him with a new suit, to make suggestions as
to proper employment instead of at the jam factory--all those proper,
philanthropic and prudent suggestions that a really sensible clergyman
would have made. And yet, somehow, not only had he not made them, but it
was obvious and evident when he regarded them that they could not
possibly be made. Guiseley (of Drew's) did not require them, he was on
another line altogethe