e _her_ invention, not mine.'

Neither Robert nor Catherine were very well pleased. But there was
something reassuring as well as comic in the stoicism with which Flaxman
took his position. And clearly the matter must be left to manage itself.

Next morning the weather had improved. Robert, his hand on Flaxman's
arm, got down to the beach. Flaxman watched him critically, did not like
some of his symptoms, but thought on the whole he must be recovering at
the normal rate, considering how severe the attack had been.

'What do you think of him?' Catherine asked him next day, with all her
soul in her eyes. They had left Robert established in a sunny nook, and
were strolling on along the sands.

'I think you must get him home, call in a first-rate doctor, and keep
him quiet,' said Flaxman. 'He will be all right presently.'

'How _can_ we keep him quiet?' said Catherine, with a momentary despair
in her fine pale face. 'All day long and all night long he is thinking
of his work. It is like something fiery burning the heart out of him.'

Flaxman felt the truth of the remark during the four days of calm autumn
weather he spent with them before the return journey. Robert would talk
to him for hours--now on the sands, with the gray infinity of sea before
them-now pacing the bounds of their little room till fatigue made him
drop heavily into his long chair; and the burden of it all was the
religious future of the working-class. He described the scene in the
club, and brought out the dreams swarming in his mind, presenting
them for Flaxman's criticism, and dealing with them himself, with that
startling mixture of acute common-sense and eloquent passion which had
always made him so effective as an initiator. Flaxman listened dubiously
at first, as he generally listened to Elsmere, and then was carried
away, not by the beliefs, but by the man. _He_ found his pleasure in
dallying with the magnificent _possibility_ of the Church; doubt with
him applied to all propositions, whether positive or negative; and
he had the dislike of the aristocrat and the cosmopolitan for the
provincialisms of religious dissent. Political dissent or social reform
was another matter. Since the Revolution, every generous child of the
century has been open to the fascination of political or social Utopias.
But religion! _What--what is truth?_ Why not let the old things alone?

However, it was through the social passion, once so real in him, and
still livi