‘You feel no difficulties in the way?’ he asked at last, with a certain quick brusqueness of manner. ‘No,’ said Robert, eagerly. ‘I never had any. Perhaps,’ he added with a sudden humility, ‘it is because I have never gone deep enough. What I believe might have been worth more if I had had more struggle; but it has all seemed so plain.’ The young voice speaking with hesitation and reserve, and yet with a deep inner, conviction, was pleasant to hear. Mr. Grey turned toward it, and the great eyes under the furrowed brow had a peculiar gentleness of expression. ‘You will probably be very happy in the life,’ he said. ‘The Church wants men of your sort.’ But through all the sympathy of the tone Robert was conscious of a veil between them. He knew, of course, pretty much what it was, and with a sudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break through it and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others, wide as was the intellectual difference between them. But the tutor’s reticence and the younger man’s respect prevented it. When the unlucky second class was actually proclaimed to the world, Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother. No one knew better than he what Elsmere’s gifts were. It was absurd that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. ‘_Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi!_’ was about the gist of Langham’s mood during the days that followed on the class list. Elsmere, however, did not divulge his intention of taking Orders to him till ten days afterward, when he had carried off Langham to stay at Harden, and he and his old tutor were smoking in his mother’s little garden one moonlit night. When he had finished his statement Langham stood still a moment, watching the wreaths of smoke as they curled and vanished. The curious interest in Elsmere’s career, which during a certain number of months had made him almost practical, almost energetic, had disappeared. He was his own languid, paradoxical self. ‘Well, after all,’ he said at last, very slowly, ‘the difficulty lies in preaching anything. One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.’ ‘What do you mean by a mythology?’ cried Robert, hotly. ‘Simply ideas, or experiences, personified,’ said Langham, puffing away. ‘I take it they are the subject-matter of all theologies.’ ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Robert, flushing. ‘To the Christian, facts have been the medium by which ideas the world could not otherwise have come at have been communicated to man. Christian theology is a system of ideas indeed, but of ideas realized, made manifest in facts.’ Langham looked at him for a moment, undecided; then that suppressed irritation we have already spoken of broke through. ‘How do you know they are facts?’ he said, dryly.