“Man excuses himself for disregarding Christ’s express commandment by telling himself that the salvation of the world is God’s affair, not his. God’s love will make for man’s benefit a new heaven and a new earth. There is no need for man to bestir himself. While man pursues his greeds and hatreds God is busy preparing the miracle. One day, man is to wake up and find, to his joy, that he loves his fellow man; and the tears of the world will be wiped away. It is not God, it is man that must accomplish the miracle. It is by man’s own endeavour that he will be saved; by cleansing himself of hate, by setting himself in all seriousness to this great business of loving. Until he obeys Christ’s commandment he shall not enter the promised land. “I have put it more or less into my own words,” she explained, “but I have given you the sense of it. He thought the time would come--perhaps soon--when the thinkers of the world would agree that civilization had been progressing upon a wrong line--that if destruction was to be avoided, man must retrace his steps. He thought that, apart from all else, the mere instinct of self-preservation would compel the race to turn aside from the pursuit of material welfare to the more important work of its spiritual development. He did not expect any conscious or concerted movement. Rather he believed that men and women in increasing numbers would withdraw themselves from the world, that they might live lives in conformity with God’s laws. He was a curious mixture of the religious and the scientific. He often employed the word God, but could not explain what he meant beyond that he ‘felt’ him. He held that the only altar at which a reasonable man could worship was the altar erected by the Greeks: ‘To the Unknown God.’ Christ he regarded as a Promethean figure who had received the fire from heaven and brought it down to men. That fire would never be extinguished. The spirit of Christ still moved about the world. It was the life force behind what little love still glowed and flickered among men. One day the smouldering embers would burst into flame.” Betty put in two or three years at The Priory on and off, occupying herself chiefly with writing. But the wanderlust had got into her blood, and her book finished she grew restless. One day Anthony and Eleanor had dined with her at The Priory. Eleanor had run away immediately after dinner to attend a committee meeting of the Children’s Holiday Society of which she was the president. Betty, she was sure, sympathized sufficiently with the movement to forgive her. She would be back soon after nine. Betty and Anthony took their coffee in the library. “I wanted you both to come tonight,” she explained. “I’ve got into a habit of acting suddenly when an impulse seizes me. I may wake up any morning and feel I’ve got to go.” “Whither?” he asked. “How much money can I put my hands on within the next few months?” she asked.