Datcherd looked ill; that was the predominant impression Eddy got of him. An untidy, pale, sad-eyed person of thirty-five, with a bad temper and an extraordinarily ardent fire of energy, at once determined and rather hopeless. The evils of the world loomed, it seemed, even larger in his eyes than their possible remedies; but both loomed large. He was a pessimist and a reformer, an untiring fighter against overwhelming odds. He was allied both by birth and marriage (the marriage had been a by-gone mistake of the emotions, for which he was dearly paying) with a class which, without intermission, and by the mere fact of its existence, incurred his vindictive wrath. (See _Further_, month by month.) He had tried and failed to get into Parliament; he had now given up hopes of that field of energy, and was devoting himself to philanthropic social schemes and literary work. He was not an attractive person, exactly; he lacked the light touch, and the ordinary human amenities; but there was a drawing-power in the impetuous ardour of his convictions and purposes, in his acute and brilliant intelligence, in his immense, quixotic generosity, and, to some natures, in his unhappiness and his ill-health. And his smile, which came seldom, would have softened any heart. Perhaps he did not smile at Hillier on Monday evening; anyhow Hillier’s heart remained hard towards him, and his towards Hillier. He was one of the generation who left the universities fifteen years ago; they are often pronounced and thoughtful agnostics, who have thoroughly gone into the subject of Christianity as taught by the Churches, and decided against it. They have not the modern way of rejection, which is to let it alone as an irrelevant thing, a thing known (and perhaps cared) too little about to pronounce upon; or the modern way of acceptance, which is to embark upon it as an inspiring and desirable adventure. They of that old generation think that religion should be squared with science, and, if it can’t be, rejected finally. Anyhow Datcherd thought so; he had rejected it finally as a Cambridge undergraduate, and had not changed his mind since. He believed freedom of thought to be of immense importance, and, a dogmatic person himself, was anxious to free the world from the fetters of dogma. Hillier (also a dogmatic person; there are so many) preached a sermon the Sunday after he had met Datcherd about those who would find themselves fools at the Judgment Day. Further, Hillier agreed with James Peters that the relations of Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine were unfitting, considering that everyone knew that Datcherd didn’t get on with his wife nor Mrs. Le Moine live with her husband. People in either of those unfortunate positions cannot be too careful of appearances.