He sat down on the grass with his back to an ancient thorn-tree and gazed upon the tower of his beloved church. Would he not be false to that Church--false to his vows of ordination--if he were now to draw back from the firing-line of the battle and give up the struggle by a cowardly retreat? Even supposing the temptation were more than he could endure--even supposing that he fell--would not God prefer his suffering such a fall with his face to the foe, sword in hand, rather than that he should be saved, his consecrated weapon dropped from his fingers, in squalid ignoble flight? So much for the arguments whispered in his ear by the angel of darkness! But he had lately been visited by another angel--surely not of darkness--and he recalled the plausible reasonings of the great champion of the papacy, as he sat in that pleasant window sipping his wine. Why should he agitate himself so furiously over this little matter? After all, why not enjoy the pleasure of this exquisite being’s society? He was in no danger of doing her any harm--he knew Gladys at least well enough by now to know that!--and what harm could she do him? There was no harm in being attracted irresistibly to something so surpassingly attractive! Suppose he fell really in love with her? Well! There was no religious rule--certainly none in the church he belonged to--against falling in love with a lovable and desirable girl. But it was not a matter of falling in love. He knew that well enough. There was very little of the romantic or the sentimental about the feelings she aroused in him. It was just a simple, sensuous, amorous attraction to a provocative and alluring daughter of Eve. Just a simple sensuous attraction--so simple, so natural, as to be almost “innocent,” as Mr. Taxater would put it. So he argued with himself; but the Tower of the Church opposite seemed to invade the mists of these subtle reasonings with a stern emphasis of clear-cut protest. He knew well enough that his peculiar nature was not of the kind that might be called “sensuous” or “amorous,” but of quite a different sort. The feelings that had lately been excited in him were as concentrated and passionate as his feelings for the altar he served. They were indeed a sort of temporal inversion of this sacred ardour; or, as the cynical Mr. Quincunx in his blunt manner would have expressed it, this sacred fire itself was only a form taken by the more earthly flame. But a “flame” it was,--not any gentle toying with soft sensation,--a flame, a madness, a vice, an obsession.