hod with people like me."

"I thought you'd come up to talk about the South African War. If I'd
known the war was so near home, I shouldn't have been so frivolous,"
said the priest. His eyes were so merry in the leaping firelight that
Michael was compelled against his will to smile.

"Of course, you make me laugh at the time and I forget how serious I
meant to be when I arrived, and it's not until I'm at home again that I
realize I'm no nearer to what I wanted to say than when I came up,"
protested Michael.

"I'm not the unsympathetic boor you'd make me out," Mr. Viner said.

"Oh, I perfectly understand that all this heart-searching becomes a
nuisance. But honestly, Mr. Viner, I think I've done nothing long
enough."

"Then you do want to enlist?" said the priest quickly.

"Why must 'doing' mean only one thing nowadays? Surely South Africa
hasn't got a monopoly of whatever's being done," Michael argued. "No, I
don't want to enlist," he went on. "And I don't want to go into a
monastery, and I'm not sure that I really even want to go to church
again."

"Give up going for a bit," advised the priest.

Michael jumped up from the chair and walked over to the bay-window,
through which came a discordant sound of children playing in the street
outside.

"It's impossible to be serious with you. I suppose you're fed up with
people like me," Michael complained. "I know I'm moody and irritating,
but I've got a lot to grumble about. I don't seem to have any natural
inclination for any profession. I'm not a musical genius like my young
sister. That's pretty galling, you know, really. After all, girls can
get along better than boys without any special gifts, and she simply
shines compared with me. I have no father. I've no idea who I was, where
I came from, what I'm going to be. I keep on trying to be optimistic and
think everything is good and beautiful, and then almost at once it turns
out bad and ugly."

"Has your religion really turned out bad and ugly?" asked the priest
gently.

"Not right through, but here and there, yes."

"The religion itself or the people who profess it?" Mr. Viner persisted.

"Doesn't it amount to the same thing ultimately?" Michael parried. "But
leave out religion for the moment, and consider this war. The only
justification for such a war is the moral effect it has on the nations
engaged. Now, I ask you, do you sincerely believe there has been a trace
of any purifying influence since we star