So Robert had hastily to provide another subject, and he fell upon that of the Squire. Mr. Newcome’s eyes flashed. ‘He is coming back? I am sorry for you, Elsmere. “Woo is me that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar!”’ And he fell back in his chair, his lips tightening, his thin long hand lying along the arm of it, answering to that general impression of combat, of the spiritual athlete, that hung about him. ‘I don’t know,’ said Robert brightly, as he leant against the mantelpiece looking curiously at his visitor. ‘The Squire is a man of strong-character, of vast learning. His library is one of the finest in England, and it is at my service. I am not concerned with his opinions.’ ‘Ah, I see,’ said Newcome in his driest voice, but sadly. You are one of the people who believe in what you call tolerance--I remember.’ ‘Yes, that is an impeachment to which I plead guilty,’ said Robert, perhaps with equal dryness; ‘and you--have your worries driven you to throw tolerance overboard?’ Newcome bent forward quickly. Strange glow and intensity of the fanatical eyes--strange beauty of the wasted, persecuting lips! ‘Tolerance!’ he said with irritable vehemence--‘tolerance! Simply another name for betrayal, cowardice, desertion--nothing else. God, Heaven, Salvation on the one side, the Devil and Hell on the other--and one miserable life, one wretched sin-stained will, to win the battle with; and in such a state of things _you_--’ He dropped his voice, throwing out every word with a scornful, sibilant emphasis-- ‘_You_ would have us believe as though our friends were our enemies and our enemies our friends, as though eternal misery were a bagatelle, and our faith a mere alternative. _I stand for Christ_, and His foes are mine.’ ‘By which I suppose you mean,’ said Robert, quietly, that you would shut your door on the writer of “The Idols of the Market-place”?’ ‘Certainly.’ And the priest rose, his whole attention concentrated on Robert, as though some deeper-lying motive were suddenly brought into play than any suggested by the conversation itself. ‘Certainly. _Judge not_--so long as a man has not judged himself,--only till then. As to an open enemy, the Christian’s path is clear. We are but soldiers under orders. What business have we to be truce-making on our own account? The war is not ours, but God’s!’ Robert’s eyes had kindled. He was about to indulge himself in such a quick passage of arms as all such natures as his delight in, when his look travelled past the gaunt figure of the Ritualist vicar to his wife. A sudden pang smote, silenced him. She was sitting with her face raised to Newcome; and her beautiful gray eyes were full of a secret passion of sympathy. It was like the sudden re-emergence of something repressed, the satisfaction of something hungry. Robert moved closer to her, and the color rushed over all his young boyish face.