een like a red rag to a bull. He only talked in much
his usual vein about the proposed College, the lamentable want of
interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of modern society,
and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying that for the present he
feared Pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could be done.

"As regards the laity," said Pryer, "nothing; not until we have a
discipline which we can enforce with pains and penalties. How can a
sheep dog work a flock of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as well
as bark? But as regards ourselves we can do much."

Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he were
thinking all the time of something else. His eyes wandered curiously
over Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander before: the words
were about Church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part of
the story had a knack of dropping out after having been again and again
emphatically declared to apply to the laity and not to the clergy: once
indeed Pryer had pettishly exclaimed: "Oh, bother the College of
Spiritual Pathology." As regards the clergy, glimpses of a pretty large
cloven hoof kept peeping out from under the saintly robe of Pryer's
conversation, to the effect, that so long as they were theoretically
perfect, practical peccadilloes--or even peccadaccios, if there is such a
word, were of less importance. He was restless, as though wanting to
approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept
harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of
definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which
half the vices wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. He dwelt also
on the advantages of complete unreserve, and hinted that there were
mysteries into which Ernest had not yet been initiated, but which would
enlighten him when he got to know them, as he would be allowed to do when
his friends saw that he was strong enough.

Pryer had often been like this before, but never so nearly, as it seemed
to Ernest, coming to a point--though what the point was he could not
fully understand. His inquietude was communicating itself to Ernest, who
would probably ere long have come to know as much as Pryer could tell
him, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a
visitor. We shall never know how it would have ended, for this was the
very last time that Ernest ever saw Prye