"The state of affairs is more than sad, it is iniquitous. And therefore the Church must assert herself. The individual minister must assert himself, and claim a higher scale of remuneration. Help yourself, show push and principle, cultivate practical aims--that is what I preach to young men reading for Holy Orders. We have no place in these days for visionaries and dreamers. We want men who march with the times, who are interested in politics, and can make themselves felt." So did the great voice roll on and outward. Very beautiful to the listeners in sound--though, in sense, it may be questioned whether it conveyed very definite ideas to them--but highly embarrassing to the house-parlourmaid, whose feminine tones quite failed to make headway against the volume of it. With the consequence that Dominic Iglesias was left standing in the shadow of the doorway unheeded. He was aware, and that not without surprise, how much these few days of freedom and leisure had quickened his perceptions. His mental attitude had changed. His demand had ceased to be moderate. Hence he suffered a hundred offences to taste and sensibility hitherto unknown, or at least unregistered. He knew when a woman was plain, when a conversation was vapid or vulgar, a manner pretentious, a speech lacking in sincerity. Consciously he stood aside, no longer out of humility or indifference, but critically observant, challenging things however familiar, and passing judgment upon them. For example, the unlovely character of Mrs. Lovegrove's drawing-room engrossed his attention--the dirty-browns and tentative watery blues of it, the multiplicity of flimsy, worthless, little ornaments revealing a most lamentable absence of artistic perception. In that fine booming clerical voice he detected a kindred absence of delicate perception, a showiness born of very inadequate conception of relative values. Indeed, the voice and the sentiments given forth by it, in as far as he caught the drift of them, raised a definite spirit of antagonism in him. The voice seemed to trample. Dominic Iglesias was taken with an inclination--very novel in him--to trample, too. He crossed the room, an added touch of gravity and dignity in his aspect and manner. The clergyman gazed at him with some curiosity, while Mrs. Lovegrove surged up off the sofa. "Mr. Iglesias! Well, of all people! Whoever would have expected to see you at this early hour of the day?" "Talk of a certain gentleman and that gentleman appears," Miss Eliza Hart whispered. Then wagging her finger at her host, "Now don't you forget that little question of mine. Find out his intentions, just, as you may say, under the rose. But there's Peachie signalling to go."