Strange unfathomable thoughts surged up in the depths of Clavering’s soul. He found himself wishing that he had authority over her, that he might tame her wilful spirit, and lay her under the yoke of some austere penance. Why was she free to provoke him thus, with her merciless fragility? The madness she was arousing grew steadily upon him. He stumbled awkwardly round the edge of the table and approached her. The scent of burning weeds became yet more emphatic. To make his nearness to her less obvious, and out of a queer mechanical instinct to allay his own conscience, he continued his spiritual admonitions, even when he was quite close--even when he could have touched her with his hand. And it would be so easy to touch her! The playful perilousness of her position in the window made such a movement natural, justifiable, almost conventional. “The true doctrine of the Incarnation,” his lips repeated, “is not that something contrary to nature has happened; it is that the innermost secret of Nature has been revealed. And this secret,”--here his fingers closed feverishly on the casement-latch--“is identical with the force that swings the furthest star, and drives the sap through the veins of all living things.” It would have been of considerable interest to a student of religious psychology--like Mr. Taxater for example--to observe how the phrases that mechanically passed Clavering’s lips at this juncture were all phrases drawn from the works of rationalistic modernists. He had recently been reading the charming and subtle essays of Father Mervyn; and the soft and melodious harmonies of that clever theologian’s thought had accumulated in some hidden corner of his brain. The authentic religious emotion in him being superseded by a more powerful impulse, his mind mechanically reverted to the large, dim regions of mystical speculation. A certain instinct in him--the instinct of his clamorous senses--made him careful to blur, confuse, and keep far back, that lovely and terrible “Power from Outside,” the hem of Whose garments he had clung to, the night before. “Christ,” he went on, “is, as it were, the centre and pivot of the whole universe, and every revelation granted to us of His nature is a revelation from the system of things itself. I want you to understand that our true attitude towards this great mystery, ought to be the attitude of scientific explorers, who in searching for hidden causes have come upon the one, the unique Cause.” The girl’s only indication that she embraced the significance of these solemn words was to make a sudden gliding serpentine movement which brought her into a position more easy to be retained, and yet one that made it still more unnatural that he should refuse her some kind of playful and affectionate support.