nk the man is sincere.'

This was very uncomfortable ground, but Sidwell would not avoid it. Her
eyes flashed, and she spoke with a vehemence such as Martin had never
seen in her.

'Undoubtedly sincere in his determination to make a figure in the
world. But a Christian, in any intelligible sense of that much-abused
word,--no! He is one type of the successful man of our day. Where
thousands of better and stronger men struggle vainly for fair
recognition, he and his kind are glorified. In comparison with a really
energetic man, he is an acrobat. The crowd stares at him and applauds,
and there is nothing he cares for so much as that kind of admiration.'

Martin kept silence, and in a few minutes succeeded in broaching a
wholly different subject.

Not long after this, Mr. Chilvers paid a call at the conventional hour.
Sidwell, hoping to escape, invited two girls to step out with her on to
the lawn. The sun was sinking, and, as she stood with eyes fixed upon
it, the Rev. Bruno's voice disagreeably broke her reverie. She was
perforce involved in a dialogue, her companions moving aside.

'What a magnificent sky!' murmured Chilvers. '"There sinks the nebulous
star." Forgive me, I have fallen into a tiresome trick of quoting. How
differently a sunset is viewed nowadays from what it was in old times!
Our impersonal emotions are on a higher plane--don't you think so? Yes,
scientific discovery has done more for religion than all the ages of
pious imagination. A theory of Galileo or Newton is more to the soul
than a psalm of David.'

'You think so?' Sidwell asked, coldly.

In everyday conversation she was less suave than formerly. This summer
she had never worn her spray of sweet-brier, and the omission might
have been deemed significant of a change in herself. When the occasion
offered, she no longer hesitated to express a difference of opinion; at
times she uttered her dissent with a bluntness which recalled
Buckland's manner in private.

'Does the comparison seem to you unbecoming?' said Chilvers, with
genial condescension. 'Or untrue?'

'What do you mean by "the soul"?' she inquired, still gazing away from
him.

'The principle of conscious life in man--that which understands and
worships.'

'The two faculties seem to me so different that'----She broke off. 'But
I mustn't talk foolishly about such things.'

'I feel sure you have thought of them to some purpose. I wonder whether
you ever read Francis Newman's book