‘A wonderful instance,’ thought Adrian, ‘of how the life of man runs in cycles. For the last twenty thousand years or so we’ve been trying, as we thought, to improve on the principle which guides the life of these Indians, only to find it reintroduced as the perfect pattern.’

He sat for some time with a smile biting deep into the folds about his mouth. Doctrinaires, extremists! That Arab who put a pistol to young Desert’s head was a symbol of the most mischievous trait in human nature! Ideas and creeds—what were they but half-truths, only useful in so far as they helped to keep life balanced? The geographical magazine slipped off his knee.

He stopped on the way home in the garden of his square to feel the sun on his cheek and listen to a blackbird. He had all he wanted in life: the woman he loved, fair health, a fair salary—seven hundred a year and the prospect of a pension—two adorable children, not his own, so that he was free from the misgivings of more normal parents; an absorbing job, a love of nature, and another thirty years, perhaps, before him. ‘If at this moment,’ he thought, ‘someone put a pistol to my head and said: “Adrian Cherrell, renounce Christianity or out go your brains!” should I say with Clive in India: “Shoot and be damned!”?’ And he could not answer. The blackbird continued to sing, the young leaves to twitter in the breeze, the sun to warm his cheek, and life to be desirable in the quiet of that one-time fashionable square…

Dinny, when she left those two on the verge of acquaintanceship, had paused, in two minds, and then gone north to St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads. Her instinct was to sap the opposition of the outlying portions of her family, so as to isolate the defences of her immediate people. She moved towards the heart of practical Christianity with a certain rather fearful exhilaration.

Her Aunt May was in the act of dispensing tea to two young ex-Collegians before their departure to a club where they superintended the skittles, chess, draughts, and ping-pong of the neighbourhood.

“If you want Hilary, Dinny, he had two committees, but they might collapse, because he’s almost the whole of both.”

“You and uncle know about me, I suppose?”

Mrs. Hilary nodded. She was looking very fresh in a sprigged dress.

“Would you mind telling me what uncle feels about it?”

“I’d rather leave that to him, Dinny. We neither of us remember Mr. Desert very well.”

“People who don’t know him well will always misjudge him. But neither you nor uncle care what other people think.” She said this with a guileless expression which by no means deceived Mrs. Hilary, accustomed to Women’s Institutes.

“We’re neither of us very orthodox, as you know, Dinny, but we do both of us believe very deeply in what Christianity stands for, and it’s no good pretending we don’t.”

Dinny thought a moment.

“Is that more than gentleness and courage and self-sacrifice, and must one be a Christian to have those?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. I should be sorry to say anything that would put me in a position different from Hilary’s.”

“Auntie, how model of you!”

Mrs. Hilary smiled. And Dinny knew that judgment in this quarter was definitely reserved.

She waited, talking of other things, till Hilary came in. He was looking pale and worried. Her aunt gave him tea, passed a hand over his forehead, and went out.

Hilary drank off his tea and filled his pipe with a knot of tobacco screwed up in a circular paper.

“Why corporations, Dinny? Why not three doctors, three engineers, three architects, an adding machine, and a man of imagination to work it and keep them straight?”

“Are you in trouble, Uncle?”

“Yes, gutting houses on an overdraft is ageing enough, without corporational red tape.”

Looking at his worn but smiling face, Dinny thought: ‘I can’t bother him with my little affairs.’ “You and Aunt May couldn’t spare time, I suppose, to come to the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday?”

“My goodness!” said Hilary, sticking one end of a match into the centre of the knob and lighting the knob with the other end, “how I would love to stand in a tent and smell azaleas!”

“We thought of going at one o’clock, so as to avoid the worst of the crush. Aunt Em would send for you.”

“Can’t promise, so don’t send. If we’re not at the main entrance at one, you’ll know that Providence has intervened. And now, what about you? Adrian has told me.”

“I don’t want to bother you, Uncle.”

Hilary’s shrewd blue eyes almost disappeared. He expelled a cloud of smoke.

“Nothing that concerns you will bother me, my dear, except in so far as it’s going to hurt you. I suppose you MUST, Dinny?”

“Yes, I must.”

Hilary sighed.

“In that case it remains to make the best of it. But the world loves the martyrdom of others. I’m afraid he’ll have a bad Press, as they say.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“I can only just remember him, as a rather tall, scornful young man in a buff waistcoat. Has he lost the scorn?”

Dinny smiled.

“It’s not the side I see much of at present.”

“I sincerely trust,” said Hilary, “that he has not what they call devouring passions.”

“Not so far as I have observed.”

“I mean, Dinny, that once that type has eaten its cake, it shows all the old Adam with a special virulence. Do you get me?”

“Yes. But I believe it’s a ‘marriage of true minds’ with us.”

“Then, my dear, good luck! Only, when people begin to throw bricks, don’t resent it. You’re doing this with your eyes open, and you’ll have no right to. Harder to bear than having your own toe trodden on is seeing one you love batted over the head. So catch hold of yourself hard at the start, and go on catching hold, or you’ll make it worse for him. If I’m not wrong, Dinny, you can get very hot about things.”

“I’ll try not to. When Wilfrid’s book of poems comes out, I want you to read one called ‘The Leopard’; it gives his state of mind about the whole thing.”

“Oh!” said Hilary blankly. “Justification? That’s a mistake.”

“That’s what Michael says. I don’t know whether it is or not; I think in the end—not. Anyway, it’s coming out.”

“There beginneth a real dog-fight. ‘Turn the other cheek’ and ‘too proud to fight’ would have been better left unsaid. All the same, it’s asking for trouble, and that’s all about it.”

“I can’t help it, Uncle.”

“I realise that, Dinny; it’s when I think of the number of things you won’t be able to help that I feel so blue. And what about Condaford? Is it going to cut you off from that?”

“People do come round, except in novels; and even there they have to in the end, or else die, so that the heroine may be happy. Will you say a word for us to Father if you see him, Uncle?”

“No, Dinny. An elder brother never forgets how superior he was to you when he was big and you were not.”

Dinny rose.

“Well, Uncle; thank you ever so for not believing in damnation, and even more for not saying so. I shall remember all you’ve said. Tuesday, one o’clock at the main entrance; and don’t forget to eat something first; it’s a very tiring business.”

When she had gone Hilary refilled his pipe.

‘“And even more for not saying so!”’ he repeated in thought. ‘That young woman can be caustic. I wonder how often I say things I don’t mean in the course of my professional duties.’ And, seeing his wife in the doorway, he added:

“May, would you say I was a humbug—professionally?”

“Yes, dear. How could it be otherwise?”

“You mean, the forms a parson uses aren’t broad enough to cover the variations of human nature? But I don’t see how they could be. Would you like to go to the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday?”

Mrs. Hilary, thinking: ‘Dinny might have asked ME,’ replied cheerfully: “Very much.”

“Let’s try and arrange so that we can get there at one o’clock.”