that,
and simply say that I do not believe it to be true."

"You do not withdraw it," continued Percy serenely; "you still really
believe it to be absurd: you have told me so a dozen times. Well, I
repeat, that is pride, and quite sufficient to account for it all. It is
the moral attitude that matters. There may be other things too---"

Father Francis looked up sharply.

"Oh! the old story!" he said sneeringly.

"If you tell me on your word of honour that there is no woman in the
case, or no particular programme of sin you propose to work out, I shall
believe you. But it is an old story, as you say."

"I swear to you there is not," cried the other.

"Thank God then!" said Percy. "There are fewer obstacles to a return of
faith."

There was silence for a moment after that. Percy had really no more to
say. He had talked to him of the inner life again and again, in which
verities are seen to be true, and acts of faith are ratified; he had
urged prayer and humility till he was almost weary of the names; and had
been met by the retort that this was to advise sheer self-hypnotism; and
he had despaired of making clear to one who did not see it for himself
that while Love and Faith may be called self-hypnotism from one angle,
yet from another they are as much realities as, for example, artistic
faculties, and need similar cultivation; that they produce a conviction
that they are convictions, that they handle and taste things which when
handled and tasted are overwhelmingly more real and objective than the
things of sense. Evidences seemed to mean nothing to this man.

So he was silent now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis,
looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-world parlour, its
tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary
hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see,
ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no
more to be done.

Father Francis, who had been sitting in a lax kind of huddle, seemed to
know his thoughts, and sat up suddenly.

"You are tired of me," he said. "I will go."

"I am not tired of you, my dear father," said Percy simply. "I am only
terribly sorry. You see I know that it is all true."

The other looked at him heavily.

"And I know that it is not," he said. "It is very beautiful; I wish I
could believe it. I don't think I shall be ever happy again--but--but
there it is."

Percy sighed. He