He was told that he must be confirmed. Like the minister who prepared him, he understood nothing of the significance of the ceremony, but contact with one or two religiously minded young men released the pent-up emotion in him and it rushed out in such a flood that he was like to drown. He clutched at the first cause that came to hand, turned to the first manly and inspiring personality that he encountered, the rector of St. Saviour's, and he embraced the High Church creed and all its tenets, prejudices, and shibboleths. Only an accident had saved him from the worst consequences of his education. XXI MRS. ENTWISTLE'S HEART _God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman._ RICHARD FEVEREL. WITH the best intentions in the world Francis could not overcome the inevitable dislike with which Frederic's mere presence inspired him. He could not bring himself to speak more than three words to him or to make any inquiry into his affairs. Frederic also suffered under the constraint of the secret they shared, and relieved the situation by absenting himself as much as possible from the house. His fiancée made that easy by her extensive demands upon his time and he became more a member of her family than of his own. Francis kept his word with Annie Lipsett, and every week sent her ten shillings, and, knowing that his wife opened his letters, got her to write, when she had anything to say, to Serge. His conscience was very uneasy about the whole affair, but he knew that if he did not do what he was doing no one else would, and he could not bring himself to righteous acceptance of the conclusions of his premises, that, after all, the girl had brought it on herself, and, like hundreds of others, must fight through the consequences alone and unaided. "If I knew the hundreds of others," he said to himself, "I could not possibly help them all. I could not afford it. . . . Can I afford to help this young woman? . . . I cannot, but I must." He submitted to this moral imperative, but he could not away with the idea that he was encouraging immorality. That idea became fixed, an obsession. It worried him so much that he decided to go and see the young woman and make quite sure as to the state of her mind, to demonstrate if necessary that though things were being made comfortable and easy for her in this world she could not hope to escape the punishment for her sin in the next.