us
Pharisees, believing ourselves not as other men? But surely it is not as
Christians but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.
Officers, he called us. I fear--I fear it is true.' Ah, well! There
would not be many more days now. He would learn out there how to open
the hearts of others, and his own. Suffering and death levelled all
barriers, made all men brothers. He was still sitting there when Gratian
came in; and taking her hand, he said:

"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and go
to them, Gracie. I'm giving up the parish and asking for a chaplaincy."

"Giving up? After all this time? Is it because of Nollie?"

"No, I think not; I think the time has come. I feel my work here is
barren."

"Oh, no! And even if it is, it's only because--"

Pierson smiled. "Because of what, Gracie?"

"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself. We want to think and decide things
for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take things at
second-hand any longer."

Pierson's face darkened. "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
grievous thing."

"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.

"The two things are not opposed, my dear."

"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are. Oh, Dad! you
look so tired. Have you really made up your mind? Won't you feel lost?"

"For a little. I shall find myself, out there."

But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
turned away.

Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh
and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane
championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,' he
thought. 'Ought I to stay and conquer it?' Twice he set his pen down,
twice took it up again. He could not conquer it. To stay where he was
not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never! And while he sat before 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