"Why you quarrel with me is more than I know," he went on. "You've got tired of me, I suppose, and want to amuse yourself with another man." The red flushed in her cheek. "If my husband, who you say is nothing to us, were here," she said, "he would horsewhip you." The other laughed savagely. "He is not here, however, so you may digest my remark at your leisure." Mrs. Wilson rose from her seat with an air of dignity which was really imposing. "Mr. Rangely," she said, "it is not my custom to bandy words, even with my equals. I have allowed you the freedom of my house because I was willing to help you in your desire to be useful to Father Frontford. You have taken advantage of my kindness to insult me. This seems to me sufficiently to explain the situation." He stared at her a moment in evident amazement. Then he burst into hoarse laughter. "My desire to be useful to Father Frontford!" he echoed. "That is the best yet! You know I cared nothing about your pottering old church politics except to please you." "I see that I was deceived completely," she responded coldly. She crossed the room and pressed an ivory button. "Deceived!" he sneered. "It would take a clever man to deceive you." She looked not at him, but beyond him. He turned, and saw a footman in the doorway. "The gentleman wishes to be shown out, Forrester," said she. She held the tips of her fingers to Rangely. "Thank you so much for coming," she murmured in her most conventional manner. "The pleasure has been mine," he responded. They both bowed, and Rangely followed the footman. XVII A BOND OF AIR Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. "You have made a new man of me," Maurice Wynne had said to Mrs. Morison in bidding her good-by; and the words repeated themselves in his mind as he came back to Boston, and as he once more took up for a few days his home with Mrs. Staggchase. There is nothing more inflammable than the punk left by the decay of a religion, and any theology may be said to be doomed from the moment when men begin to ask themselves whether they believe it. Maurice had been so strenuously questioning his belief that it is small wonder that he found his heart full of fire. In the days of his stay at Brookfield, moreover, he had been rapidly journeying on the road toward a new view of life; and the idea of returning to the Clergy House became to him well-nigh intolerable. It seemed like taking upon himself once more the swaddling-clothes of infancy.