Newbury stood still. "No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God _has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." "Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as those two poor things had for each other!" After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the last word of his own creed. Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could be reached. Newbury paused. "Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again." He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever seen it. "Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood. It tells me where to go--and I obey." He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced him. But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. "Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say to-night." He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. CHAPTER XVI Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, and went off to find Marion Atherstone--the only person with whom he could trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress--and even his rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, led by a sure instinct, he went.