e revelation.'

To Godwin it was a grinding of the air, but the listener appeared to
think it profitable.

With his clerical friend, Mr. Lilywhite, he rarely touched on matters
of religion. The vicar of St. Ethelreda's was a man well suited to
support the social dignity of his Church. A gentleman before
everything, he seemed incapable of prying into the state of a
parishioner's soul; you saw in him the official representative of a
Divinity characterised by well-bred tolerance. He had written a
pleasant little book on the by-ways of Devon and Cornwall, which
brought about his intimacy with the Warricombe household. Peak liked
him more the better he knew him, and in the course of the summer they
had one or two long walks together, conversing exclusively of the
things of earth. Mr. Lilywhite troubled himself little about evolution;
he spoke of trees and plants, of birds and animals, in a loving spirit,
like the old simple naturalists. Geology did not come within his sphere.

'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I could never care much for it. Don't
think I'm afraid of it--not I! I feel the grandeur of its scope, just
as I do in the case of astronomy; but I have never brought myself to
study either science. A narrowness of mind, no doubt. I can't go into
such remote times and regions. I love the sunlight and the green fields
of this little corner of the world--too well, perhaps: yes, perhaps too
well.'

After one of these walks, he remarked to Mrs. Lilywhite:

'It's my impression that Mr. Peak has somehow been misled in his choice
of a vocation. I don't think he'll do as a churchman.'

'Why not, Henry?' asked his wife, with gentle concern, for she still
spoke of Peak's 'quiet moral force'.

'There's something too restless about him. I doubt whether he has
really made up his mind on any subject whatever. Well, it's not easy to
explain what I feel, but I don't think he will take Orders.'

Calling at the vicarage one afternoon in September, Godwin found Mrs
Lilywhite alone. She startled him by saying at once:

'An old acquaintance of yours was with us yesterday, Mr. Peak.'

'Who could that be, I wonder?'

He smiled softly, controlling his impulse to show quite another
expression.

'You remember Mr. Bruno Chilvers?'

'Oh, yes!'

There was a constriction in his throat. Struggling to overcome it, he
added:

'But I should have thought he had no recollection of me.'

'Quite the contrary, I assure you. He is to succ