“Yes, He must come in from _outside_,” murmured the priest, “or He cannot help us. He must be able to break every law and custom and rule of nature and man. He must strike at the whole miserable entanglement from outside it--from outside it!” Clavering’s voice rose almost to a shout as he uttered these last words. He felt as though he were refuting in one tremendous cry of passionate certainty all those “modernistic” theories with which he loved sometimes to play. He was completely under Vennie’s influence now. “And we must help Him,” said the girl, “by entering into His Sacrifice. Only by sacrifice--by the sacrifice of everything--can we enable Him to work the miracle which He would accomplish!” Clavering could do nothing but echo her words. “The sacrifice of everything,” he whispered, and abstractedly laid _his_ hand upon the image of death carved by the old artist. Moved apparently by an unexpected impulse, Vennie seized, with her own, the hand thus extended. “I have thought,” she cried, “of a way out of your difficulty. Give her her lessons in the church! That will not hurt her feelings, and it will save you. It will prevent her from distracting your mind, and it will concentrate her attention upon your teaching. It will save you both!” Clavering held the little hand, thus innocently given him, tenderly and solemnly in both of his. “You are right, my friend,” he said, and then, gravely and emphatically as if repeating a vow,--“I will take her in the church. That will settle everything.” Vennie seemed thrilled with spiritual joy at his acquiescence in her happy inspiration. She walked so rapidly as they recrossed the churchyard that he could hardly keep pace with her. She seemed to long to escape, to the solitude of her own home, of her own room, in order to give full vent to her feelings. He locked the gate of the porch behind them, and put the key in his pocket. Very quickly and in complete silence they made their way up the road to the entrance of the Vicarage garden. Here they separated, with one more significant and solemn hand-clasp. It was as if the spirit of St. Catharine herself was in the girl, so ethereal did she look, so transported by unearthly emotion, as the gate swung behind her. As for the vicar of Nevilton, he strode back impetuously to his own house, and there, from its place beneath the print of the transfiguration, he took the letter, and tore it into many pieces; but he tore it with a different intention from that which, an hour before, had ruled his brain; and the sleep which awaited him, as soon as his head touched his pillow, was the soundest and sweetest he had known since first he came to the village. CHAPTER IX THE MYTHOLOGY OF POWER It was late in the afternoon of the day following the events just described. Mrs. Fringe was passing in and out of Clavering’s sitting-room making the removal of his tea an opportunity for interminable discourse.