y more.

"I can't be regular in anything, and now there's the preaching."

"What's the matter with that?"

"Who was it who said that a popular preacher could not save his soul?
Father Rector says that it's very bad for me that I crowd up the church.
He is evidently anxious about me."

"How kind!"

"Then, since I've been preaching, such odd people come to see me."

"I know," said the Canon, "there's a fringe of the semi-insane round all
churches; they used to lie in wait for me once."

"Then I simply love society. I've been to hear such interesting people
talk at several houses lately. I go a good deal to Miss Dexter."

"Miss Molly Dexter."

"Yes."

"I wouldn't do that; she's a minx. She is the girl who stayed with that
kind little woman, Mrs. Delaport Green, who sometimes comes to see me."

"You see," Mark went on eagerly, "I'm doing no good like this. So I have
made up my mind to try and be a Carthusian."

His face lit up now with the same intense delight. "It's such a splendid
life! Fancy! No more humbug, and flattery, and insincerity. 'Vous ne
jouerez plus la comedie,' an old monk said to me. Wouldn't it be
splendid? Think of the stillness, and then the singing of the Office
while the world is asleep, like the little birds at dawn. It would be
simply and entirely to live for God!"

"I do believe in a personal devil," muttered Canon Nicholls to himself,
and Mark stared at him. "Now listen," he said. "There is a young man who
has a vocation to the priesthood, and he comes under obedience to work
in London. That is, to live in the thick of sin, of suffering, of folly
and madness. If it were acknowledged that the place was full of cholera
or smallpox it would be simple enough. But the place is thick with
disguises. The worst cases don't seem in the least ill; the stench of
the plague is a sweet smell, and the confusion is thicker because there
are angels and demons in the same clothes, living in the same houses,
doing the same actions, saying almost the same things. In every Babylon
there have been these things, but this is about the biggest. And the
most harmless of the sounds, the hum of daily work, is loud and
continuous enough to dull and wear the senses. So confused and perplexed
is the young man that he doesn't know when he has done good or done
harm; being young, compliments appeal to him very seriously; being
young, he takes too many people's opinions; and, being young, he
generalises and if, for