"That's right," laughed George again. "Tell me when you are going to
deliver your broadside."

"It will not be very soon," said Hubert. "I do not find such comfort
in my doubts as to give me a missionary call to spread them."

They came to a turn in the road and parted. Hubert had had a more
animated conversation with his sister's friend than he remembered ever
to have had before. He strode on alone through the park whither his
steps had taken him, still pursuing the same line of thought.

"No," he reflected, "why should I seek to communicate my doubts? I
never knew a man to be worse for believing in Jesus Christ. I believe
some men have been better for it. Certainly I do not admire the
company I am in."

His mind reviewed a company such as would be called together by an
infidel cause, and he recoiled from it. He saw socialist faces of the
baser type, ready but for the occasion to blossom into anarchism; he
saw clever women whose bold loosening of the yoke of conventional
religion had relaxed also the hold of conventional morals, and he was
glad Winifred was not among them; he saw the face of Doctor Bossman,
the leader of the cause, tall, massive-browed, handsome, with bold,
full, outstanding eyes, a man of defiant words, of jovial popularity,
and egregiously self-centered. Into the young man's mind, in contrast
to the proud face, there flashed fragments of the words of the
Nazarene: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children!" He
saw other faces not so typical, and found himself seated amongst them,
and abhorred the fraternity cemented by a common unbelief--a cold
negation. He was unhappy. He found no territory on which to stand.
He hated the cant and formalism that chilled him in the fashionable
church. He hated the insolent creed of the deist, and the ignorance of
the agnostic. He seemed to be hating almost all things with himself
included. If he had been sure there was a God who heard mortals pray,
he would have cried to Him to deliver him from so wretched a position.
But he roused himself from his reverie and sought to throw to the winds
his unhappy feelings. He walked back to the house endeavoring to think
of to-morrow's business, and determining to give himself to an
interesting book when he got there.

Winifred had a headache which was opportune. By it she excused herself
from tea and from church that evening. Her father carried her
apologies to the leader of the choir. M