wholly strange and bewildering, a world which, though Christian in
name, seemed brutal in nature--brutal as the pagan empires were
brutal, yet without the excuse of their ignorance and passion.

Yet his intellect had seemed unable to refute the conclusion of
that march of events, that coherence of all ideals in a reasoned
whole, that fulfilment of instincts, that play of forces, upon
which, as upon a tide, Catholicism had floated to final victory
in the history of mankind. Not one element had seemed wanting;
and, as if to convince by sensible visions that brain which
shrank from merely argued logic, one by one he had seen for
himself as in a picture lesson, how at Versailles the social
tangle of an individual kingdom had once more submitted to
monarchy--that faulty mirror of the Divine government of the
world; how at Rome the stability of rival kingdoms, had found
itself once more in an arbiter whose kingdom was not of this
world; how finally, at Lourdes, in the widest circle of all, the
very science of the world itself had found itself not confronted
or opposed, but welcomed and transcended, by a school of thinkers
whose limitations lay only in the Infinite.

Once more then he had returned. Yet he had found that the head
and the imagination are not all; that man has a heart as well;
and that this has its demands no less inexorable that those of
intellect. And it was this heart of his that had seemed outraged
and silenced. For he had found in Christianity a synthesis of
ideas--a coincidence of knowledge--which, while satisfying that
head, emerged in a system to which his heart could be no party.
He had learned that "Christian society must protect itself"; and
he had seemed in this to find a denial of the essential Christian
doctrine that success comes only by defeat, and triumph by the
Cross. It had seemed to him that Christ had accepted the taunts
at last, had come down from the Cross and won the homage only of
those who did not understand Him. He had been quieted indeed for
a time, under the power of men who, whatever the rest of the
world might do, still thought that suffering was the better part.
Yet he had been quieted; not convinced.

Then he had sought a glimpse of the reverse of the picture--of
that which now seemed the sole alternative to that faith which he
feared--a glimpse only; yet full of significance. For he had seen
men to whom the better part of themselves seemed nothing; men who
walked with down