d, and carried her chin high in the air. Brenton's head
was bowed between his shoulders; he walked heavily, his eyes upon the
ground. Indeed, the two of them were equally lacking in elasticity.
Katharine's tension was too great to admit of any margin for spring.
Brenton's relaxation was too complete to leave any one aware that a
spring ever had existed.

As the weeks ran on into months, the spiritual separation between them
grew more definite. There was no friction, no clashing. They were too
remote from each other for that. They met at meals as usual; they dined
out together; occasionally they sat out a concert side by side. Apart
from that, however, they went their ways without discussion. Katharine
was flinging her entire enthusiasm, nowadays, into her religious life,
and into its interesting corollary, the beautification of her bodily
temple for the Universal Mind. She prinked and preened herself just as
industriously as she conned her morocco-bound books of devotion. She
went to church on Sundays with a zeal that balked at no combination of
storms and mileage. Between the services, she spent the greater part of
her time in the society of certain fellow scientists who lived not far
away, and she emerged from their society so filled with zeal as to make
small evangelistic forays into the borders of Saint Peter's Parish.
Olive Keltridge was one victim. Ramsdell was another. Ramsdell,
however, stated his own platform unmincingly.

"I beg your pardon for so speaking to a lady," he said crisply; "but I
was born in the Established Church, and I don't go for kicking it over
into a perfect slush of tommy-rot. Besides, my present job is to look
out for Mr. Hopdyke, not to go off my 'ead, arguing about religion."
And, with a salute more crushing than he was at all aware, Ramsdell
swung on his heel and went striding away down the street.

All this was bound to tell upon a man of Brenton's calibre, the more so
in that Brenton already was worn out with fighting his own personal
battles of the spirit. For the first few weeks of this evident, though
tacit, hostility, he suffered acutely, both from the hostility itself,
and from his constant self-examinations to discover whether some fault
of his had been the cause. In time, however, there came the inevitable
reaction towards a sensible steadiness. Even the spirit can become
callous in time, as Brenton was finding out, half to his own regret,
half to his infinite relief.

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