"To-night--here!--we submit the new marriage service and the new burial service to the Church Council. And the same thing will be happening, at the same moment, in all the churches of the Reform--scattered through England." "How many churches now?" she asked, with a quickened breath. "Eighteen in July--this week, over a hundred. But before our cases come on for trial there will be many more. Every day new congregations come in from new dioceses. The beacon fire goes leaping on, from point to point!" But the emotion which the phrase betrayed was instantly replaced by the business tone of the organizer as he went on to describe some of the practical developments of the preceding weeks: the founding of a newspaper; the collection of propagandist funds; the enrolment of teachers and missionaries, in connection with each Modernist church. Yet, at the end of it all, feeling broke through again. "They have been wonderful weeks!--wonderful! Which of us could have hoped to see the spread of such a force in the dusty modern world! You remember the fairy story of the prince whose heart was bound with iron bands--and how one by one, the bands give way? I have seen it like that--in life after life." "And the fighting?" She had propped her face on her hands, and her eyes, with their eager sympathy, their changing lights, rained influence on the man beside her; an influence insensibly mingling with and colouring the passion for ideas which held them both in its grip. "--Has been hot--will be of course infinitely hotter still! But yet, again and again, with one's very foes, one grasps hands. They seem to feel with us 'the common wave'--to be touched by it--touched by our hope. It is as though we had made them realize at last how starved, how shut out, we have been--we, half the thinking nation!--for so long!" "Don't--don't be too confident!" she entreated. "Aren't you--isn't it natural you should miscalculate the forces against you? Oh! they are so strong! and--and so noble." She drew in her breath, and he understood her. "Strong indeed," he said gravely. "But--" Then a smile broke in.