‘Come, dear, you know I have never pretended to be a good man. I do the best I can with my opportunities, and try to be as much use as I can in my generation.’ ‘But you call yourself a Christian, Churchill?’ she asked, solemnly. Their life had been so glad, so bright, so busy, so full of action and occupation, that they had seldom spoken of serious things. Never till this moment had Madge asked her husband that simple, solemn question. He turned from her with a clouded face, turned from her impatiently even, and walked to the other end of the room. ‘If there is one thing I hate more than another, Madge, it is theological argumentation,’ he said, shortly. ‘There is no argument here, Churchill; a man is or is not a follower of Christ.’ ‘Then I am not,’ he said. She shrank away from him as if he had struck her, looked at him for a few moments with a pale agonized face, and left him without a word. She could not trust herself to speak—the blow had been too sudden, too heavy. She went away to her own room and shut herself in, and wept for him and prayed for him. But she loved him not the less because by his own lips he stood confessed an infidel. That was how she interpreted his words of self-condemnation. She forgot that a man may believe in Christ, yet not follow Him: believe, like the devils, and, like the devils, tremble. * * * * * Mrs. Penwyn never spoke to her husband of the people at the north lodge after this. They were associated with a too painful memory. Churchill, however, did not forget to reprove the lodge-keeper’s slovenliness, and his brief and stern remonstrance had some effect. The lodge was kept in better order, at least so far as its external appearance went. Within it was still a disorderly den.