There came, of course, a reaction presently, and he turned to his religion. He groped for his rosary under his pillow, placed before him (according to the instructions given in the little books) the "Mystery of the Annunciation to Mary," and began the "Our Father." ... Half-way through it he began all over again to think about Cambridge, and Merefield and Jack Kirkby, and the auction in his own rooms, and his last dinner-party and the design on the menu-cards, and what a fool he was; and when he became conscious of the rosary again he found that he held in his fingers the last bead but three in the fifth decade. He had repeated four and a half decades without even the faintest semblance of attention. He finished them hopelessly, and then savagely thrust the string of beads under his pillow again; turned over once more, rearranged his feet, wished the Major would learn how to sleep like a gentleman; and began to think about his religion in itself. * * * * * After all, he began to say to himself, what proof was there--real scientific proof--that the thing was true at all? Certainly there was a great deal of it that was, very convincing--there was the curious ring of assertion and confidence in it, there was its whole character, composed (like personality) of countless touches too small to be definable; there was the definite evidence adduced from history and philosophy and all the rest. But underneath all that--was there, after all, any human evidence in the world sufficient to establish the astounding dogmas that lay at the root? Was it conceivable that any such evidence could be forthcoming? He proceeded to consider the series of ancient dilemmas which, I suppose, have presented themselves at some time or another to every reasonable being--Free-will and Predestination; Love and Pain; Foreknowledge and Sin; and their companions. And it appeared to him, in this cold, emotionless mood, when the personality shivers, naked, in the presence of monstrous and unsympathetic forces, that his own religion, as much as every other, was entirely powerless before them. He advanced yet further: he began to reflect upon the innumerable little concrete devotions that he had recently learned--the repetition of certain words, the performance of certain actions--the rosary for instance; and he began to ask himself how it was credible that they could possibly make any difference to eternal issues. These things had not yet surrounded themselves with the atmosphere of experience and association, and they had lost the romance of novelty; they lay before him detached, so to say, and unconvincing.