"This emotion is a fundamental thing," he said to Lady Durham, "and history will show you that persecution will intensify it to the point of martyrdom. There is only one way to combat it. Give it room. Let them do as they will. The heat of the fire is too fierce for you to damp it down; you only supply more fuel. Fan it, throw it open to the air, and it will burn itself harmlessly out." Elsie Durham shrugged her shoulders. "That's all very well," she said. "I believe it's perfectly true. But they make you the bone of contention. If it were only Millie Gosling--well--she might go. We could find a place for her--at Fingest, perhaps. But we can't spare you." "I don't know why not," returned Thrale. "I never intended to stay indefinitely. You can carry on now without me, and I can fulfil my original intention and push on into the West." "My dear man! we can't, and we won't!" said Elsie Durham. "You are indispensable." "No one is indispensable," replied Thrale. "Bother your metaphysics, Jasper!" was the answer. "We are not going to let you go. 'We' is the majority of Marlow, not only the committee. We'll fight the fanatics somehow." The majority referred to by Elsie Durham was fairly compact in relation to this issue of retaining Jasper Thrale, and included the two greater of the three recognizable parties in the community. Of these three, the greatest was the moderate party, made up of Episcopalians, Nonconformists and a few Roman Catholics, who found relief for their emotion one day in seven either in the Town Hall or Marlow Church, in which places services and meetings were held--the former by certain approved individuals, notably Elsie Durham and the widow of the late Rector of Marlow. The second party in order of size included all those who either denied the Divine revelation or were careless of all religious matters. The third party--the Jenkynites, as they were dubbed by their opponents--had drawn their numbers from every old denomination. The Jenkynites were differentiated from the other two parties by certain physical differences. For instance, the Jenkynites numbered few members under the age of thirty-five; very few of them were fat, and very few of them were capable field workers; they were hungry-eyed, and had a certain air of disappointed eagerness about them; they looked as though they had for ever sought something, and, finding it, had remained unsatisfied. In all, there were some seventeen women who might have been regarded as quite true to type, and about this vivid nucleus were clustered nearly a hundred other women, many of whom exhibited some characteristic mark of the same type, while the remainder, perhaps 40 per cent of the whole body, had joined the party out of bravado, to seek excitement, or for some purpose of expediency. Among the last was Mrs Isaacson, who was the ultimate cause of the Jenkynite defeat.