The click of the door behind him warned him that he was not alone. He turned and saw Miss Skelton, his typist, for it was her time to come for his manuscript and copy it out in the specially legible type he used. For a moment he stared at her strangely. She looked at him with those deep, adoring eyes of hers. "Am I too soon, sir?" she asked in her slow, unhappy voice, and seemed prepared for a noiseless departure. He did not answer immediately. Then he said: "Miss Skelton, the Judgement of God is close at hand!" And seeing she stood perplexed, he said-- "Miss Skelton, how can you expect me to go on acting and mouthing this Tosh when the Sword of Truth hangs over us?" Something in her face made him ask a question. "Did _you_ see anything?" he asked. "I thought it was because I was rubbing my eyes." "Then indeed there is a God! And He is watching us now. And all this about us, this sinful room, this foolish costume, this preposterous life of blasphemous pretension----!" He stopped short, with a kind of horror on his face. With a hopeless gesture he rushed by her. He appeared wild-eyed upon the landing before his manservant, who was carrying a scuttle of coal upstairs. "Brompton," he said, "what are you doing?" "Coal, sir." "Put it down, man!" he said. "Are you not an immortal soul? God is here! As close as my hand! Repent! Turn to Him! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" § 10 Now if you are a policeman perplexed by a sudden and unaccountable collision between a taxicab and an electric standard, complicated by a blinding flash and a sound like an abbreviated trump from an automobile horn, you do not want to be bothered by a hatless clerical gentleman suddenly rushing out of a handsome private house and telling you that "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" You are respectful to him because it is the duty of a policeman to be respectful to Gentlemen, but you say to him, "Sorry I can't attend to that now, sir. One thing at a time. I've got this little accident to see to." And if he persists in dancing round the gathering crowd and coming at you again, you say: "I'm afraid I must ask you just to get away from here, sir. You aren't being a 'elp, sir." And if, on the other hand, you are a well-trained clerical gentleman, who knows his way about in the world, you do not go on pestering a policeman on duty after he has said that, even although you think God is looking at you and Judgement is close at hand. You turn away and go on, a little damped, looking for some one else more likely to pay attention to your tremendous tidings. And so it happened to the Reverend Mr. Parchester.