"Faith! It isn't faith! It's sight, I tell you. Why, man, look here, if Manning were to come gravely to my room to-night and argue that you were a myth, what the blazes do you think I should say? I should laugh in his face! 'Why, I had tea with him this afternoon,' I should say! And it's the same with Jesus. Dick"--the eager voice hushed a little--"we're having tea with _Him_ this afternoon." Hartley did not laugh. He half glanced round. "Can one act on that altogether?" he queried. Paul flung out his hand with an eager gesture. "Why not?" he cried. "One should act on it absolutely I think." Hartley spoke slowly. "Well, but would Christ stay here, read Harnack, take in a newspaper" (his eyes roved the room), "row, get new window-curtains, and--and fall in love?" His gaze rested on a portrait on the mantelpiece. Paul's hand fell to his side. He, too, glanced round the simple, commonplace, in the opinion of most people severely plain room. Then he dropped into a chair. "You must ask Him," he said slowly. "Suppose I have?" "Then you must do what He says." Dick was altogether more slow, more solid, than Paul. He began to make tea. "It's odd," he said, busy over the cups, "but I'm not sure that I know." "Ah," said Paul, still triumphant and impetuous, "I asked you if you really knew Him, Dick." (3) In Hursley Woods that vacation, Paul explained it all to Edith. They were seated side by side on a fallen log, and all around them the fresh blue of the wild hyacinths was unstained as Paradise. They lit the dull day with a radiance of their own. Brown and green and grey blent about them and faded into distance, and he held her hand. The two had just kissed with a solemn virginal innocence. They were glad, but not gay. Francis of Assisi would have wondered at them, had he been there. As it was one of his brethren, a big blackbird with a bright enquiring eye, emphatically did so. It probably struck him that these restrained humans were out of place in such a vivid, tingling, riotous life as that of a wood in spring. He hopped off to look for a worm. Paul renewed the conversation that the kissing had interrupted. "You see, Edith, dear," he said, "it's so illogical to believe one thing and act another. What are the realities of life? God, and a lost world, and Christ our Saviour. What does anything matter beside them? Both Dick and I feel that everything--_everything_--ought to be surrendered to Him. Even things good in themselves must go down before the awful necessity of preaching the Gospel. Mind you, I don't speak of learning quite as I did. I see, for example, that if I get a first in my History, it will be of use in the Church. But all the rest--do you see?" She nodded slowly. "Yes, in a way," she said.