ver, outside interests were daily growing more insistent; of
necessity they crowded out a little of his personal and domestic worry.
There were innumerable conferences with Doctor Keltridge and Professor
Opdyke; there was one discussion with the assembled trustees of the
college; there was one hard hour of explanation before the assembled
wardens of the church. Last of all came the talk with his curate whom,
despite his bunny hood and his archaic theological tenets, Brenton had
grown to love. Up to the very hour of their talk, the callow little
curate had gained no inkling of what his rector had been passing
through. To his young mind, the experience was no less cruel to himself
than it had been to Brenton. He had supposed that the belief of every
man was cut out by a paper pattern outlined from directions in the
Pentateuch, and washed in with dainty coloured borders taken from the
Gospels and the Book of Revelation. It shocked him unspeakably to find
that any man had dared to tear up that pattern and draft a fresh one
for himself. However, as the talk went on, shock had yielded to an
intense pity, born of his love for his superior officer. Brenton was
mistaken, wofully mistaken; but the mistake had cost him dear. All the
more, he was deserving pity upon that account. The tears stood in the
little curate's honest eyes, as he gripped Brenton's hand at parting.
He could not understand his rector in the least; but he could be
perfectly aware that it was no small privilege to be admitted to the
confidence of so upright a man.

These preliminary duties done, Brenton lost no time in making public
the fact of his resignation. At the time, he was too busy with the
practical details of his transplanting to pay any great heed to the
storm of opposition which his resignation roused. Later on, it pleased
him, just as the enthusiasm of his college classes pleased him, after
it had ceased to be a fact and had turned into a memory. For the time
being, though, he had stopped all feeling. Instead, he must preach his
final sermons without flinching, must confine them so closely to the
matter of mere practical living as to leave no loophole for dogma to
creep in; he must make everything as easy as possible for his successor
who, at best, was bound to have a hard time of it in starting; above
all, he must help Katharine to choose exactly such a house as she
wished, and to furnish it exactly as her taste should dictate. And so
the pressure