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“Why not?”

“Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the gods do not trouble themselves with mortals, while you have been asserting that ‘The Deity’ troubles Himself even with the souls of heathens?”

“Certainly. But that is quite a distinct matter from his dislike of what he calls Relligio. In that dislike I can sympathise fully: but on his method of escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with more complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name of Atheism.”

“Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you knew all. So we had better say no more about it.”

“A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul- curer by profession!”

“Why, what on earth have you to do but to abhor and flee me?” asked he, with a laugh, though by no means a merry one.

“Would your having a headache be a reason for the medical man’s running away from you, or coming to visit you?”

“Ah, but this, you know, is my ‘fault,’ and my ‘crime,’ and my ‘sin.’ Eh?” and he laughed again.

“Would the doctor visit you the less, because it was your own fault that your head ached?”

“Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in his powers of curing, and had a great hankering after unaccredited Homoeopathies, like Mr. Windrush’s; would not that be a fair cause for interdiction from fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial?”

“Come, come, Templeton,” I said; “you shall not thus jest away serious thoughts with an old friend. I know you are ill at ease. Why not talk over the matter with me fairly and soberly? How do you know till you have tried, whether I can help you or not?”

“Because I know that your arguments will have no force with me; they will demand of me or assume in me, certain faculties, sentiments, notions, experiences-call them what you like; I am beginning to suspect sometimes with Cabanis that they are ‘a product of the small intestines’-which I never have had, and never could make myself have, and now don’t care whether I have them or not.”

“On my honour, I will address you only as what you are, and know yourself to be. But what are these faculties, so strangely beyond my friend Templeton’s reach? He used to be distinguished at college for a very clear head, and a very kind heart, and the nicest sense of honour which I ever saw in living man; and I have not heard that they have failed him since he became Templeton of Templeton. And as for his Churchmanship, were not the county papers ringing last month with the accounts of the beautiful new church which he had built, and the stained glass which he brought from Belgium, and the marble font which he brought from Italy; and how he had even given for an altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Templeton House?”

“Effeminate picture!” he said. “It was part and parcel of the idea- “

Before I could ask him what he meant, he looked up suddenly at me, with deep sadness on his usually nonchalant face.

“Well, my dear fellow, I suppose I must tell you all, as I have told you so much without your shaking the dust off your feet against me, and consulting Bradshaw for the earliest train to Shrewsbury. You knew my dear mother?”

“I did. The best of women.”

“The best of women, and the best of mothers. But, if you recollect, she was a great Low-Church saint.”

“Why ‘but’? How does that derogate in any wise from her excellence?”

“Not from her excellence; God forbid! or from the excellence of the people of her own party, whom she used to have round her, and who were, some of them, I do believe, as really earnest, and pious, and charitable, and all that, as human beings could be. But it did take away very much indeed from her influence on me.”