valleys edged by twinkling sea.

Here, sensitive and receptive to his last hour, Elsmere drank in beauty
and delight; talking, too, whenever it was possible to him, of all
things in heaven and earth. Then when he came home, he would have out
his books and fall to some old critical problem--his worn and scored
Greek Testament always beside him, the quick eye making its way through
some new monograph or other, the parched lips opening every now and
then to call Flaxman's attention to some fresh light on an obscure
point--only to relinquish the effort again and again with an unfailing
patience.

But though he would begin as ardently as ever, he could not keep his
attention fixed to these things very long. Then it would be the turn of
his favorite poets--Wordsworth, Tennyson, Virgil. Virgil perhaps most
frequently. Flaxman would read the AEneid aloud to him, Robert following
the passages he loved best in whisper, his hand resting the while
in Catherine's. And then Mary would be brought in, and he would lie
watching her while she played.

'I have had a letter,' he said to Flaxman one afternoon, 'from a Broad
Church clergyman in the Midlands, who imagines me to be still militant
in London, protesting against the "absurd and wasteful isolation" of the
New Brotherhood. He asks me why instead of leaving the Church I did not
join the Church Reform Union, why I did not attempt to widen the
Church from within, and why we in Elgood Street are not now in organic
connection with the new Broad Church settlement in East London. I
believe I have written him rather a sharp letter; I could not help it.
It was borne in on me to tell him that it is all owing to him and his
brethren that we are in the muddle we are in to-day. Miracle is to our
time what the law was to the early Christians. We _must_ make up our
minds about it one way or the other. And if we decide to throw it over
as Paul threw over the law, then we must fight as he did. There is no
help in subterfuge, no help in anything but a perfect sincerity. We
must come out of it. The ground must be cleared; then may come the
rebuilding. Religion itself, the peace of generations to come, is at
stake. If we could wait indefinitely while the Church widened, well and
good. But we have but the one life, the one chance of saying the word or
playing the part assigned us.'

On another occasion, in the convent garden, he broke out with,--

'I often lie here, Flaxman, wondering at the way