e touch of theatricality in your temperament, the peculiar
craving to be pseudo-deeper, pseudo-simpler than us all, the need of
personal excitement. I know that you were never quite contented
to believe in God at second-hand. You wanted to be taken notice
of--personally. Except for some few hints to you, I have never breathed
a word of these doubts to any human being; I have always hoped that
the ripening that comes with years and experience would give you an
increasing strength against the dangers of emotionalism and against your
strong, deep, quiet sense of your exceptional personal importance...."

The bishop read thus far, and then sat reflecting.

Was it just?

He had many weaknesses, but had he this egotism? No; that wasn't
the justice of the case. The old man, bitterly disappointed, was
endeavouring to wound. Scrope asked himself whether he was to blame for
that disappointment. That was a more difficult question....

He dismissed the charge at last, crumpled up the letter in his hand, and
after a moment's hesitation flung it away.... But he remained acutely
sorry, not so much for himself as for the revelation of Likeman this
letter made. He had had a great affection for Likeman and suddenly it
was turned into a wound.

(3)

The second letter was from Lady Sunderbund, and it was an altogether
more remarkable document. Lady Sunderbund wrote on a notepaper that was
evidently the result of a perverse research, but she wrote a letter far
more coherent than her speech, and without that curious falling away
of the r's that flavoured even her gravest observations with an unjust
faint aroma of absurdity. She wrote with a thin pen in a rounded boyish
handwriting. She italicized with slashes of the pen.

He held this letter in both hands between his knees, and considered
it now with an expression that brought his eyebrows forward until they
almost met, and that tucked in the corners of his mouth.

"My dear Bishop," it began.

"I keep thinking and thinking and thinking of that wonderful service, of
the wonderful, wonderful things you said, and the wonderful choice you
made of the moment to say them--when all those young lives were coming
to the great serious thing in life. It was most beautifully done. At any
rate, dear Bishop and Teacher, it was most beautifully begun. And now we
all stand to you like creditors because you have given us so much that
you owe us ever so much more. You have started us and you have