ly, and then he became restless. Should he call her?

But he wanted their talk to begin in a natural-seeming way. He did not
want the portentousness of "wanting to speak" to her and calling her out
to him. He got up at last and went back into the other room. Clementina
had gone upstairs, and the book she had been reading was lying closed on
the sideboard. He saw it was one of Chasters' books, he took it up, it
was "The Core of Truth in Christianity," and he felt an irrational
shock at the idea of Clementina reading it. In spite of his own
immense changes of opinion he had still to revise his conception of the
polemical Chasters as an evil influence in religion. He fidgeted
past his wife to the mantel in search of an imaginary mislaid pencil.
Clementina came down with some bandage linen she was cutting out. He
hung over his wife in a way that he felt must convey his desire for a
conversation. Then he picked up Chasters' book again. "Does any one want
this?" he asked.

"Not if I may have it again," consented Clementina.

He took it back with him and began to read again those familiar
controversial pages. He read for the best part of an hour with his knees
drying until they smoked over the gas. What curious stuff it was! How
it wrangled! Was Chasters a religious man? Why did he write these
books? Had he really a passion for truth or only a Swift-like hatred
of weakly-thinking people? None of this stuff in his books was really
wrong, provided it was religious-spirited. Much of it had been indeed
destructively illuminating to its reader. It let daylight through all
sorts of walls. Indeed, the more one read the more vividly true its
acid-bit lines became.... And yet, and yet, there was something hateful
in the man's tone. Scrope held the book and thought. He had seen
Chasters once or twice. Chasters had the sort of face, the sort of
voice, the sort of bearing that made one think of his possibly saying
upon occasion, rudely and rejoicing, "More fool you!" Nevertheless
Scrope perceived now with an effort of discovery that it was from
Chasters that he had taken all the leading ideas of the new faith that
was in him. Here was the stuff of it. He had forgotten how much of it
was here. During those months of worried study while the threat of
a Chasters prosecution hung over him his mind had assimilated almost
unknowingly every assimilable element of the Chasters doctrine; he
had either assimilated and transmuted it by the alchemy