all sail. And with the utterance of his lie he took an abrupt
resolution.

"Let us go away together somewhere," he exclaimed, with a brightening
face. "I need a holiday. I will get a brother clergyman to come over
from the mainland and take my services. You asked me some day to return
your visit. I accept your invitation here and now. Let me come with you
to London."

Sir Graham shook his head.

"You put me in the position of an inhospitable man," he said. "In the
future you must come to me. I look forward to that. I depend upon it.
But I cannot go to London at present. My house, my studio are become
loathsome to me. The very street in which I live echoes with childish
footsteps. I cannot be there."

"Sir Graham, you must learn to look upon your past act in a different
light. If you do not, your power of usefulness in the world will be
crushed."

The clergyman spoke with an intense earnestness. His sense of his own
increasing unworthiness, the fighting sense of the necessity laid upon
him to be unworthy for this sick man's sake, tormented him, set his
heart in a sea of trouble. He strove to escape out of it by mental
exertion. His eyes shone with unnatural fervour as he went on:

"When you first told me your story, I thought this thing weighed upon
you unnecessarily. Now I see more and more clearly that your unnatural
misery over a very natural act springs from ill-health. It is your body
which you confuse with your conscience. Your remorse is a disease
removable by medicine, by a particular kind of air or scene, by waters
even it may be, or by hard exercise, or by a voyage."

"A voyage!" cried Sir Graham bitterly.

"Well, well--by such means, I would say, as come to a doctor's mind. You
labour under the yoke of the body."

"Do you think that whenever your conscience says, 'You have done wrong'?
Tell me!"

Uniacke, who had got up in his excitement, recoiled at these words which
struck him hard.

"I--I!" he almost stammered. "What have I got to do with it?"

"I ask you to judge yourself, to put yourself in my place. That is all.
Do you tell me that all workings of conscience are due to obscure bodily
causes?"

"How could I? No, but yours--"

"Are not. They hurt my body. They do not come from my body's hurt. And
they increase upon me in this place, yes, they increase upon me."

"I knew it," cried Uniacke.

"Why is that?" said Sir Graham, with a melancholy accent. "I feel, I
begin to feel that there