inst the
mantelpiece looking curiously at his visitor. 'The Squire is a man of
strong-character, of vast learning. His library is one of the finest in
England, and it is at my service. I am not concerned with his opinions.'

'Ah, I see,' said Newcome in his driest voice, but sadly. You are one of
the people who believe in what you call tolerance--I remember.'

'Yes, that is an impeachment to which I plead guilty,' said Robert,
perhaps with equal dryness; 'and you--have your worries driven you to
throw tolerance overboard?'

Newcome bent forward quickly. Strange glow and intensity of the
fanatical eyes--strange beauty of the wasted, persecuting lips!

'Tolerance!' he said with irritable vehemence--'tolerance! Simply
another name for betrayal, cowardice, desertion--nothing else. God,
Heaven, Salvation on the one side, the Devil and Hell on the other--and
one miserable life, one wretched sin-stained will, to win the battle
with; and in such a state of things _you_--' He dropped his voice,
throwing out every word with a scornful, sibilant emphasis--

'_You_ would have us believe as though our friends were our enemies and
our enemies our friends, as though eternal misery were a bagatelle, and
our faith a mere alternative. _I stand for Christ_, and His foes are
mine.'

'By which I suppose you mean,' said Robert, quietly, that you would shut
your door on the writer of "The Idols of the Market-place"?'

'Certainly.'

And the priest rose, his whole attention concentrated on Robert, as
though some deeper-lying motive were suddenly brought into play than any
suggested by the conversation itself.

'Certainly. _Judge not_--so long as a man has not judged himself,--only
till then. As to an open enemy, the Christian's path is clear. We are
but soldiers under orders. What business have we to be truce-making on
our own account? The war is not ours, but God's!'

Robert's eyes had kindled. He was about to indulge himself in such a
quick passage of arms as all such natures as his delight in, when his
look travelled past the gaunt figure of the Ritualist vicar to his wife.
A sudden pang smote, silenced him. She was sitting with her face raised
to Newcome; and her beautiful gray eyes were full of a secret passion
of sympathy. It was like the sudden re-emergence of something repressed,
the satisfaction of something hungry. Robert moved closer to her, and
the color rushed over all his young boyish face.

'To me,' he said in a low