The vicar rose from his knees. Faint and chill of heart, he hardly cared to look up for a visible answer to his prayer. He was now in outer darkness. For Thomas Perry-Hennington there was no descent of the Spirit from the hard sky, glowing with strange beauty. He listened wildly, yet he could only hear the water flowing by Burkett’s mill. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” The living words were spurring him to frenzy. But the soul of man, naked and shuddering, helpless and lonely, recoiled upon itself with the fear that there was none of whom to seek forgiveness. For one, Thomas Perry-Hennington, there was no means of access to the Father. By an idolatrous act, setting the state above the Highest, he had severed all communication. In bigotry, arrogance, imperfect faith he had betrayed the Master; in pharisaic blindness he had crucified the Son of Man. Thoughts like these, coming at this moment, were too much for human endurance; in that direction madness lay. A little while he stood by the stone, trying to hold on to the thing he called “himself.” And then a strange desire came upon him to crave the light of one whom he had traduced. He dare not set his act higher, he dare not state his treason in other terms; at that moment the will itself forbade his so doing. An issue was now upon him which reason could not accept. To the inner eye within the mind itself all was darkness, but looking now with the ear alone he thought he heard a far, faint voice in the infinite stellar spaces, a voice telling him to go at once to Wellwood. Suddenly he turned and trailed off back to the vicarage, like some hapless, hunted thing of the fields, that flees too madly for hope of escape. As he half ran down the steep path, his white face gleaming in the sun, he began to repeat mechanically, in order still to keep in touch with the central forces: Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. By the time he had reached the middle of the lane, it came to him that he was obeying his wife’s voice. Turning in at the vicarage gate he called across the privet to the ancient Hobson to leave his roots, and go and put the harness on old Alice. XLIV VIA Grayfield, Easing and Chettleford the distance to Wellwood was nearly twenty miles. He might train from Brombridge, but the service was bad and there would be three miles to walk at the end. So he decided that old Alice should take him to Grayfield, and then he would ask Whymper to lend him his car.