Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him. "No," he replied. "I--I am all right." Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining arm. Phase Second _"And not even here do all agree--no, not any one with himself."_ --MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.) CHAPTER I Two men passed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly round, and came back. "By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!" said one, who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy polished by the oil of indulgence. "What! you haven't heard the Reverend Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and his power is only equalled by that of--of Tammany." John Driscoll laughed cynically. "Let's have the scandal, by all means," he returned. "Spare me the puling priests." "Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't reached the Pacific slope! What a hell of a place! Well, Darbey was named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the _Sun_." "A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them--or used to. But what about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth, but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at that." They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated worshippers trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with inflated cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her eyes inscrutable with chastity unsurprised, held her black silk skirt primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a bayonet. In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches upon his knee. "Why, that's the jolliest part!" responded the first man, with a tolerant smile. "This one was an atheist once--or something of the sort, but the old man--Father Speares, I mean--got hold of him, and a conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd be content with female apostles." Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. "Religion might be called the feminine element of modern society," he observed. "It owes its persistence to the attraction of sex, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is sex--sex that moves the world!" "And mars it." "The same thing. Listen!"