y real
originality and power--except perhaps the painter Watts.

"It's so like Oxford," he added, "to produce nothing distinctive."

May laughed now, with a subdued laughter that was a little irritating,
because it was uncalled for.

"I am laughing," she explained, "because 'the world we actually live in'
is such a funny place and is so full of funny people--ourselves
included."

That was not a reason for laughter if it were true, and it was not true
that she was, or that he was "funny." If she had been "funny" he would
not have been in love with her. He detained her in front of the portrait
of Wesley.

"I wonder they have had the sense to keep him here," said Boreham. "He
is a perpetual reminder to them of the scandalous torpor of the Church
which repudiated him. Yes, I wonder they tolerate him. Anyhow, I suppose
they tolerate him because, after all, they tolerate anybody who tries to
keep alive a lost cause. Religion was dying a natural death and, instead
of letting it die, he revived it for a bit. It was as good as you could
expect from an Oxford man! When an Oxford man revolts, he only revolts
in order to take up some lost cause, some survival!"

"I suppose," said May, "that if Wesley had had the advantage of being at
one of the provincial colleges, he would have invented a new soap,
instead of strewing the place with nonconformist chapels?"

This sarcasm of May's would have been exasperating, only that the
mention of soap quite naturally suggested children who had to be
soaped, and children did bring Boreham actually to an important point.
He did not really care two straws about Wesley. He went straight for
this point. He put a few piercing questions to May about her work among
children in London. Strangely enough she did not respond. She gave him
one or two brief answers of the vaguest description, while she turned
away to look at more portraits. Boreham, however, had only put the
questions as a delicate approach to _the_ subject. He did not really
want any answers, and he proceeded to point out to her that her work,
though it was undertaken in the most altruistic spirit, and appeared to
be useful to the superficial observer, was really not helpful but
harmful to the community. And this for two reasons. He would explain
them. Firstly, because it blinded people who were interested in social
questions to the need for the endowment of mothers; and secondly, the
care of other women's children did not really sa