he reason we go to hear him is not only because of
that, but because he appears to be thinking in a straight line, because
he seems to recognize the long-resisted claim of the intellect, and we
hope he will have a word to say to us. He promises well, but listen to
him a little longer, follow his thought, and you will begin to see that
he will only look for truth within a certain area, that his steps are
describing an arc, that he is tethered. Give him time enough, and you
will see him tread out the complete circle in which he and his brethren
are equally bound to walk."

"You forget," said Ruth, "that you are regarding the Church from the
stand-point of the cultivated and intellectual class, for whom the
Church has ceased to represent religion; but there are lots of people
neither cultivated nor intellectual--women even of our own class are not
so as a rule--to whom the Church, with its ritual and dogma, is a real
help and comfort. If, as you say, it does not suit the more highly
educated, I think you have no right to demand that it _should_ suit what
is, after all, a very small minority. It would be most unfair if it
did."

Charles did not answer. He had been looking at her, and thinking how few
women could have disagreed with him as quietly and resolutely as this
young girl riding at his side, carefully avoiding chance rabbit-holes as
she spoke.

"There is, and there always will be, a certain number of people, not
only among the clergy," she went on, "who, as somebody says, 'put the
church clock back,' and are unable to see that they cannot alter the
time of day for all that; only they can and do prevent many
well-intentioned people from trusting to it any longer. But there are
others here and there whom a dogmatic form of religion has been quite
unable to spoil, whose more simple turn of mind draws out of the very
system that appears to you so lifeless and effete, a real faith, a
personal possession, which no one can take from them."

Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, and Charles saw that she was thinking of
Mr. Alwynn.

"He has got it," he said, slowly, "this something which we all want, and
for the greater part never find. He has got it. To see and recognize it
early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it
in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only
come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great
misfortune--a great misfortune."

She felt t