"We have come to the fighting," he repeated, "and fighting means blows. Moreover, the fight is beginning to be equal. Twenty years ago--in Elsmere's time--a man who held his views or mine could only go. Voysey, of course, had to go; Jowett, I am inclined to think, ought to have gone. But the distribution of the forces, the lie of the field, is now altogether changed. _I_ am not going till I am turned out; and there will be others with me. The world wants a heresy trial, and it is going to get one this time." A laugh--a laugh of excitement and discomfort--escaped the younger man. "You talk as though the prospect was a pleasant one!" "No--but it is inevitable." "It will be a hateful business," Baron went on, impetuously. "My father has a horribly strong will. And he will think every means legitimate." "I know. In the Roman Church, what the Curia could not do by argument they have done again and again--well, no use to inquire how! One must be prepared. All I can say is, I know of no skeletons in the cupboard at present. Anybody may have my keys!" He laughed as he spoke, spreading his hands to the blaze, and looking round at his companion. Barron's face in response was a face of hero-worship, undisguised. Here plainly were leader and disciple; pioneering will and docile faith. But it might have been observed that Meynell did nothing to emphasize the personal relation; that, on the contrary, he shrank from it, and often tried to put it aside. After a few more words, indeed, he resolutely closed the personal discussion. They fell into talk about certain recent developments of philosophy in England and France--talk which showed them as familiar comrades in the intellectual field, in spite of their difference of age. Barron, a Fellow of King's, had but lately left Cambridge for a small College living. Meynell--an old Balliol scholar--bore the marks of Jowett and Caird still deep upon him, except, perhaps, for a certain deliberate throwing over, here and there, of the typical Oxford tradition--its measure and reticence, its scholarly balancing of this against that. A tone as of one driven to extremities--a deep yet never personal exasperation--the poised quiet of a man turning to look a hostile host in the face--again and again these made themselves felt through his chat about new influences in the world of thought--Bergson or James, Eucken or Tyrell. And to this under-note, inflections or phrases in the talk of the other seemed to respond. It was as though behind the spoken conversation they carried on another unheard. And the unheard presently broke in upon the heard.