and at last lit up, only as he raised his eyes in gratitude for the
first blissful inhalation to discover that dreadful little boy peeping
at him from the crotch in the yew-tree in the next garden. As though God
had sent him to be a witness!

Their eyes had met. The bishop recalled with an agonized distinctness
every moment, every error, of that shameful encounter. He had been too
surprised to conceal the state of affairs from the pitiless scrutiny of
those youthful eyes. He had instantly made as if to put the cigarette
behind his back, and then as frankly dropped it....

His soul would not be more naked at the resurrection. The little boy
had stared, realized the state of affairs slowly but surely, pointed his
finger....

Never had two human beings understood each other more completely.

A dirty little boy! Capable no doubt of a thousand kindred
scoundrelisms.

It seemed ages before the conscience-stricken bishop could tear himself
from the spot and walk back, with such a pretence of dignity as he could
muster, to the house.

And instead of the discourse he had prepared for the Shop-girls' Church
Association, he had preached on temptation and falling, and how he knew
they had all fallen, and how he understood and could sympathize with the
bitterness of a secret shame, a moving but unsuitable discourse that
had already been subjected to misconstruction and severe reproof in the
local press of Princhester.

But the haunting thing in the bishop's memory was the face and gesture
of the little boy. That grubby little finger stabbed him to the heart.

"Oh, God!" he groaned. "The meanness of it! How did I bring myself--?"

He turned out the light convulsively, and rolled over in the bed, making
a sort of cocoon of himself. He bored his head into the pillow and
groaned, and then struggled impatiently to throw the bed-clothes off
himself. Then he sat up and talked aloud.

"I must go to Brighton-Pomfrey," he said. "And get a medical
dispensation. If I do not smoke--"

He paused for a long time.

Then his voice sounded again in the darkness, speaking quietly, speaking
with a note almost of satisfaction.

"I shall go mad. I must smoke or I shall go mad."

For a long time he sat up in the great bed with his arms about his
knees.

(5)

Fearful things came to him; things at once dreadfully blasphemous and
entirely weak-minded.

The triangle and the eye became almost visible upon the black background
of nigh