that you have a talk with my father.'

Peak reflected on the proposal, and replied to it with grave
thoughtfulness:

'That's very kind of you, but I should have a difficulty in asking Mr.
Warricombe's advice. I'm afraid I must go on in my own way for a time.
It will be a few months, I daresay, before I can release myself from my
engagements in London.'

'But I am to understand that your mind is really made up?'

'Oh, quite!'

'Well, no doubt we shall have opportunities of talking. We must meet in
town, if possible. You have excited my curiosity, and I can't help
hoping you'll let me see a little further into your mind some day. When
I first got hold of Newman's _Apologia_, I began to read it with the
utmost eagerness, flattering myself that now at length I should
understand how a man of brains could travel such a road. I was horribly
disappointed, and not a little enraged, when I found that he began by
assuming the very beliefs I thought he was going to justify. In you I
shall hope for more logic.'

'Newman is incapable of understanding such an objection,' said Peak,
with a look of amusement.

'But you are not.'

The dialogue grew chatty. When they exchanged good-night, Peak fancied
that the pressure of Buckland's hand was less fervent than at their
meeting, but his manner no longer seemed to indicate distrust. Probably
the agnostic's mood was one of half-tolerant disdain.

Godwin turned the key in his bedroom door, and strayed aimlessly about.
He was fatigued, but the white, fragrant bed did not yet invite him; a
turbulence in his brain gave warning that it would be long before he
slept. He wound up his watch; the hands pointed to twelve. Chancing to
come before the mirror, he saw that he was unusually pale, and that his
eyes had a swollen look.

The profound stillness was oppressive to him; he started nervously at
an undefined object in a dim corner, and went nearer to examine it; he
was irritable, vaguely discontented, and had even a moment of nausea,
perhaps the result of tobacco stronger than he was accustomed to smoke.
After leaning for five minutes at the open window, he felt a soothing
effect from the air, and could think consecutively of the day's events.
What had happened seemed to him incredible; it was as though he revived
a mad dream, of ludicrous coherence. Since his display of rhetoric at
luncheon all was downright somnambulism. What fatal power had subdued
him? What extraordinary influence