he looked on
her he saw that these two were at death grips, that hatred was
prevailing, and that she herself was little more than a passive
battlefield. Then, as with a long-drawn howl of a wolf, there surged and
sank the voices of the mob a mile away, the tension broke.... She threw
herself forward towards him, he caught her by the wrists, and so she
rested, clasped in his arms, her face and bosom on his knees, and her
whole body torn by emotion.

For a full minute neither spoke. Oliver understood well enough, yet at
present he had no words. He only drew her a little closer to himself,
kissed her hair two or three times, and settled himself to hold her. He
began to rehearse what he must say presently.

Then she raised her flushed face for an instant, looked at him
passionately, dropped her head again and began to sob out broken words.

He could only catch a sentence here and there, yet he knew what she was
saying....

It was the ruin of all her hopes, she sobbed, the end of her religion.
Let her die, die and have done with it! It was all gone, gone, swept
away in this murderous passion of the people of her faith ... they were
no better than Christians, after all, as fierce as the men on whom they
avenged themselves, as dark as though the Saviour, Julian, had never
come; it was all lost ... War and Passion and Murder had returned to the
body from which she had thought them gone forever.... The burning
churches, the hunted Catholics, the raging of the streets on which she
had looked that day, the bodies of the child and the priest carried on
poles, the burning churches and convents. ... All streamed out,
incoherent, broken by sobs, details of horror, lamentations, reproaches,
interpreted by the writhing of her head and hands upon his knees. The
collapse was complete.

He put his hands again beneath her arms and raised her. He was worn out
by his work, yet he knew he must quiet her. This was more serious than
any previous crisis. Yet he knew her power of recovery.

"Sit down, my darling," he said. "There ... give me your hands. Now
listen to me."

* * * * *

He made really an admirable defence, for it was what he had been
repeating to himself all day. Men were not yet perfect, he said; there
ran in their veins the blood of men who for twenty centuries had been
Christians.... There must be no despair; faith in man was of the very
essence of religion, faith in man's best self, in what he would become,
not in what