but what our own dogs
and bows have furnished us. He shall take you in hand, and cure you of
all your Judaism in a week; and then just leave the rest to me; I will
manage it somehow or other. It is sure to come right. No; do not be
bashful. It will be real amusement to a poor wretch who can find nothing
else to do--Heigho! And as for lying under an obligation to me, why
we can square that by your lending me three or four thousand gold
pieces--Heaven knows I want them!--on the certainty of never seeing them
again.'

Raphael could not help laughing in his turn.

'Synesius is himself still, I see, and not unworthy of his ancestor
Hercules; and though he shrinks from cleansing the Augean stable of my
soul, paws like the war-horse in the valley at the hope of undertaking
any lesser labours in my behalf. But, my dear generous bishop, this
matter is more serious, and I, the subject of it, have become more
serious also, than you fancy. Consider: by the uncorrupt honour of your
Spartan forefathers, Agis, Brasidas, and the rest of them, don't you
think that you are, in your hasty kindness, tempting me to behave in a
way which they would have called somewhat rascally?'

'How then, my dear man! You have a very honourable and praiseworthy
desire; and I am willing to help you to compass it.'

'Do you think that I have not cast about before now for more than one
method of compassing it for myself? My good man, I have been tempted a
dozen times already to turn Christian: but there has risen up in me the
strangest fancy about conscience and honour.... I never was scrupulous
before, Heaven knows--I am not over-scrupulous now--except about her.
I cannot dissemble before her. I dare not look in her face when I had
a lie in my right hand.... She looks through one-into one-like a
clear-eyed awful goddess.... I never was ashamed in my life till my eyes
met hers....'

'But if you really became a Christian?'

'I cannot. I should suspect my own motives. Here is another of these
absurd soul-anatomising scruples which have risen up in me. I should
suspect that I had changed my creed because I wished to change it--that
if I was not deceiving her I was deceiving myself. If I had not loved
her it might have been different: but now--just because I do love her,
I will not, I dare not, listen to Augustine's arguments, or my own
thoughts on the matter.'

'Most wayward of men!' cried Synesius, half peevishly; 'you seem to take
some perverse plea