He had trusted Newbold at the first, as he might have trusted a son; he had forced himself to trust him afterwards, until this very day. Yet the Bishop now acknowledged that he had known well enough whose influence was at work in the diocese against his own, why certain motions he had desired were tabled in the convention, or if passed, only half-heartedly carried out. How hard the Bishop had fought not to be aware of a growing evil undercurrent in the spirit of diocesan work! He was far too sensitive not to have felt, as he talked with some of his prominent clergy and laity, his own great simple enthusiasm fall like a baffled flood against a politely concealed embarrassment he refused to understand! But he had understood! He knew now that he had. Oh, there were powers of evil militant against the faith, the work, to which he had given his life! He had tried not to see them, to believe each man good, especially this man. Yet in this moment it seemed to him that this Newbold, seated there, was the very cause of it all, of this dark Judas spirit that everywhere throughout the diocese mocked the loveliness of Christ within His very church! Again denunciation trembled like a lash, then again was restrained because of a certain dignity in the soul gazing so grimly from the bright-blue eyes, testing the Bishop. It was a face the Bishop had loved and it was haggard as a face in a fever picture. With all the power of vision innate in him the Bishop saw the facts of his failure. This was the man with whom, more than with any other, he had sought to share his service and his soul. They wore both of them the badge of God’s ministry, they were both of them the stewards of Christ’s mysteries; they sat now, after twenty years of friendship, two men girt in by four brief walls, yet far apart as two who do not speak each other’s tongue. The Bishop’s brow grew tense at the hard thought that it must have been all his own fault! He had walked, as he had thought, beside the Christ, the Friend, yet a man close to him as Newbold had perceived in the Bishop himself no reflection of that Beauty! Oh, it could not be! Newbold must understand! For the very loneliness of it, the Bishop’s face grew all wistfulness, as if a child, lost on a city street, should lift its face to a stranger, hungry for kinship. But for all his seeking the Bishop could not find the lad Newbold in the face before him, grown steel-tense with scrutiny.