e of his attack
on the character of Christ, he revealed to her how much her ground had
shifted since she had last heard him. It was not that he was an opponent
of existing Christianity her father was that, she herself was that, and
felt bound to be as long as she considered it a lie but Mr. Masterman's
attack seemed to her grossly unfair, almost willfully inaccurate, and,
in addition, his sarcasm and pleasantries seemed to her odiously vulgar.
He was answered by a most miserable representative of Christianity, who
made a foolish, weak, blustering speech, and tried to pay the atheist
back in his own coin. Erica felt wretched. She longed to get up and
speak herself, longing flatly to contradict the champion of her own
cause; then grew frightened at the strength of her feelings. Could this
be mere love of fair play and justice? Was her feeling merely that of a
barrister who would argue as well on one side as the other? And yet her
displeasure in itself proved little or nothing. Would not Charles Osmond
be displeased and indignant if he heard her father unjustly spoken of?
Yes, but then Luke Raeburn was a living man, and Christ was she even
sure that he had ever lived? Well, yes, sure of that, but of how much
more?

When the assembly broke up, her mind was in a miserable chaos of doubt.

It was one of those delicious summer evenings when even in East London
the skies are mellow and the air sweet and cool.

"Oh, Tom, let us walk home!" she exclaimed, longing for change of scene
and exercise.

"All right," he replied, "I'll take you a short cut, if you don't mind a
few back slums to begin with."

Now Erica was familiar enough with the sight of poverty and squalor;
she had not lived at the West End, where you may entirely forget
the existence of the poor. The knowledge of evil had come to her of
necessity much earlier than to most girls, and tonight, as Tom took her
through a succession of narrow streets and dirty courts, misery, and
vice, and hopeless degradation met her on every side. Swarms of filthy
little children wrangled and fought in the gutters, drunken women
shouted foul language at one another everywhere was wickedness
everywhere want. Her heart felt as if it would break. What was to reach
these poor, miserable fellow creatures of hers? Who was to raise them
out of their horrible plight? The coarse distortion and the narrow
contraction of Christ's teaching which she had just heard, offered no
remedy for this e