“I thought so.” “What did you think?” “That you were a reader of the _Journal of the Age_. Most youngsters who read anything above a sporting journal or a sensational novel are. I have been a student of it myself--a very close student. I knew the editor well. We were at one time bosom friends. He took me in training, and I recognized the symptoms in you at once.” “How so?” “The _Journal of the Age_--and it has numerous admirers and imitators--is, in these days, the ablest organ of a great and almost universal worship of an awful trinity that has existed since man was first created; and the name of that awful trinity is--the devil, the world, and the flesh.” I stared at him in silent astonishment. All the gayety of his manner, all its softness, had gone, and he seemed in deadly earnest, as he went on: “This worship is not paraded in its grossest form. Not at all. It is graced by all that wit can give and undisciplined intellect devise. It has a brilliant sneer for Faith, a scornful smile for Hope, and a chill politeness for Charity. I revelled in it for a time. Heaven forgive me! I was happy enough to escape.” “With what result?” “Briefly with this: with the conviction that man did not make this world; that he did not make himself, or send himself into it; that consequently he was not and could never be absolutely his own master; that he was sent in and called out by Another, by a Greater than he, by a Creator, by a God. I became and am a Catholic, to find that what for a time I had blindly worshipped were the three enemies against whom I was warned to fight all the days of my life.” “And the _Journal of the Age_?” “The editor cut me as soon as he found I believed in God in preference to himself. He is the fiercest opponent of Papal Infallibility with whom I ever had the honor of acquaintance.” “I cannot say that your words and the manner in which you speak them do not impress me. Still, it never occurred to me that so insignificant a being as Roger Herbert was worthy the combined attack of the three formidable adversaries you have named. What have the devil, the world, and the flesh to do with me?”