‘I see,’ said Clara: ‘you meant that at me, Wilfrid. But I assure you I am no heathen. I go to church regularly--once a Sunday when I can, and twice when I can’t help it. That’s more than you do, Mr Cumbermede, I suspect.’ ‘What makes you think so?’ I asked. ‘I can’t imagine you enjoying anything but the burial service.’ ‘It is to my mind the most consoling of them all,’ I answered. ‘Well, I haven’t reached the point of wanting that consolation yet, thank heaven.’ ‘Perhaps some of us would rather have the consolation than give thanks that we didn’t need it,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I understand you, but I know you mean something disagreeable. Polly, I think we had better go home to breakfast.’ Mary turned, and we all followed. Little was said on the way home. We divided in the hall--the ladies to breakfast, and we to our work. We had not spoken for an hour, when Charley broke the silence. ‘What a brute I am, Wilfrid!’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t I be as good as Jesus Christ? It seems always as if a man might. But just look at me! Because I was miserable myself, I went and made my poor little sister twice as miserable as she was before. She’ll never get over what I said this morning.’ ‘It _was_ foolish of you, Charley.’ ‘It was brutal. I am the most selfish creature in the world--always taken up with myself. I do believe there is a devil, after all. _I_ am _a_ devil. And the universal self is _the_ devil. If there were such a thing as a self always giving itself away--that self would be God.’ ‘Something very like the God of Christianity, I think.’ ‘If it were so, there would be a chance for us. We might then one day give the finishing blow to the devil in us. But no: _he_ does all for his own glory.’ ‘It depends on what his glory is. If what the self-seeking self would call glory, then I agree with you--that is not the God we need. But if his glory should be just the opposite--the perfect giving of himself away--then--Of course I know nothing about it. My uncle used to say things like that.’ He did not reply, and we went on with our work. Neither of the ladies came near us again that day. Before the end of the week the library was in tolerable order to the eye, though it could not be perfectly arranged until the commencement of a catalogue should be as the dawn of a consciousness in the half-restored mass. CHAPTER XXXIX. A STORM.