Possibly he reached a spiritual climax as early as that bright midsummer day that the two of them took on the Upper River. They had started in a Canader, and got as far as Haslingfield. They had stripped among the gold of buttercups, and plunged down into the cool, clear water where the mazy reeds twisted this way and that in the slow current. They had lunched, and bathed again, and lying side by side in the sun on the grass, had fixed up in common a good deal of the coming Long Vacation. Then, settling into the canoe, they had drifted slowly down-stream, Dick on his back lazily dipping a paddle now and again to avoid an obstacle, and Paul reading. Now the latter tossed the book down, and spoke. "Dick," he said vehemently, "I can't help it. They're right." "Who are?" "Roman Catholics." "Don't be an ass." "I'm not an ass, or at least not over this. Besides I don't mean that all they say and do is right. Some things obviously can't be. I shall never be a Catholic. But there is no way out of the difficulty about authority." "No? Well, chuck me over that toffee, and for goodness sake don't say so at Port o' Man." "But I say, Dick," said Paul earnestly, "do listen. It's worrying me no end. You can't answer the dilemma, either." "Don't want to," ejaculated the other. Paul stared at him. "But why not?" he demanded. "Your attitude amazes me, and oddly enough, you are not unlike my father. But anyway that _attitude's_ plainly wrong. There must be a way out. The fellow who says: 'I'm an evangelical, and I won't discuss the question or hear another side,' _must_ be wrong." Dick grunted. "Listen. The very first time I called on Father Vassall, he had me. He was frightfully kind; he understood about our Lord being real as next to nobody seems to do, and he was entirely sympathetic about the Cross just dominating everything. In fact, he was evangelical over it. He admitted he was. He said Catholics were at one with evangelicals on that point, and that their Religious Orders were composed of people who simply lived the Gospel life. But let's waive that. He went on to ask me how, despite all that, I knew what our Lord had meant by His words. "I said: 'Because it's in the Bible.' "He said: 'Granted.' (Notice there's nothing of Manning or Tressor about him, belittling the Bible.) 'But' (he went on) 'let's be definite. Take a text: _This is My Body_--what does it mean?' "I said: 'It means the bread represents His Body broken for us.' "He said: 'How do you know? At any rate for fifteen hundred years nobody thought so.' "I said: 'By prayer, by reason, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.'