to hear the Church of the nineteenth century, and no other;
and should be most happy to listen to her, as soon as she had made
up her mind what to say.'

Argemone was angry and disappointed. She felt she could not cope
with Lancelot's quaint logic, which, however unsound, cut deeper
into questions than she had yet looked for herself. Somehow, too,
she was tongue-tied before him just when she wanted to be most
eloquent in behalf of her principles; and that fretted her still
more. But his manner puzzled her most of all. First he would run
on with his face turned away, as if soliloquising out into the air,
and then suddenly look round at her with most fascinating humility;
and, then, in a moment, a dark shade would pass over his
countenance, and he would look like one possessed, and his lips
wreathe in a sinister artificial smile, and his wild eyes glare
through and through her with such cunning understanding of himself
and her, that, for the first time in her life, she quailed and felt
frightened, as if in the power of a madman. She turned hastily away
to shake off the spell.

He sprang after her, almost on his knees, and looked up into her
beautiful face with an imploring cry.

'What, do you, too, throw me off? Will you, too, treat the poor
wild uneducated sportsman as a Pariah and an outcast, because he is
not ashamed to be a man?--because he cannot stuff his soul's hunger
with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to think for himself?--
because he wants to believe things, and dare not be satisfied with
only believing that he ought to believe them?'

She paused, astonished.

'Ah, yes,' he went on, 'I hoped too much! What right had I to
expect that you would understand me? What right, still more, to
expect that you would stoop, any more than the rest of the world, to
speak to me, as if I could become anything better than the wild hog
I seem? Oh yes!--the chrysalis has no butterfly in it, of course!
Stamp on the ugly motionless thing! And yet--you look so beautiful
and good!--are all my dreams to perish, about the Alrunen and
prophet-maidens, how they charmed our old fighting, hunting
forefathers into purity and sweet obedience among their Saxon
forests? Has woman forgotten her mission--to look at the heart and
have mercy, while cold man looks at the act and condemns? Do you,
too, like the rest of mankind, think no-belief better than
misbelief; and smile on hypocrisy, lip