'Why come home? Come home and marry my neighbour's daughter--one of those Austin girls, for instance? Fancy my settling down to live with one them, and undertaking to look after her all my life; walking after her carrying a parasol and a shawl. Don't you see the ludicrous side? I always see a married man carrying a parasol and a shawl--a parasol and a shawl, the symbols of his office.' John laughed loudly. 'The swinging of a censer and the chanting of Latin responses are equally absurd if--' 'Do you think so?' 'Ritual is surely not the whole of religion?' 'No. But we were speaking of several rituals, and Catholic ritual seems to me more dignified than that of the shawl and parasol. The social life of the nineteenth century, that is to say, drawing-rooms, filled with half-dressed women, present no attraction for me. You and my mother think because I do not wish to marry and spend some small part of my time in this college that I intend to become a priest. Marry and bring up children, or enter the Church! There is nothing between, so you say, having regard for my Catholicism. But there is an intermediate state, the onlooker. However strange it may seem to you, I do assure you that no man in the world has less vocation for the priesthood than I. I am merely an onlooker, the world is my monastery. I am an onlooker.' 'Is not that a very selfish attitude?' 'My attitude is this. There is a mystery. No one denies that. An explanation is necessary, and I accept the explanation offered by the Roman Catholic Church. I obey Her in all her instruction for the regulation of life; I shirk nothing, I omit nothing, I allow nothing to come between me and my religion. Whatever the Church says I believe, and so all responsibility is removed from me. But this is an attitude of mind which you as a Protestant cannot sympathise with.' 'I know, my dear John, I know your life is not a dissolute one; but your mother is very anxious--remember you are the last. Is there no chance of your ever marrying?' 'I fear I am not suited to married life. There is a better and a purer life to lead... an inner life, coloured and permeated with feelings and tones that are intensely our own. He who may live this life shrinks from any adventitious presence that might jar it.' 'Maybe, it certainly would take too long to discuss--I should miss my train. But tell me, are you coming home for Christmas?' 'Yes, yes; I have some estate business to see to. I shall be home for Christmas. As for your train ... will find out all about your train presently... you must stay to dinner.' III. 'I was very much alarmed, my dear John, about your not sleeping. Mr. Hare told me you said that you went two or three nights without closing your eyes, and that you had to have recourse to sleeping draughts.' 'Not at all, mother, I never took a sleeping draught but twice in my life.'