Lawrence swilling beer in his rooms was a great spectacle. Usually blasphemous and always obscene, he did everything on such a generous scale and with such a childish innocence and honesty that he was always attractive and rarely repelled even one so fastidious as Davenant. It was on Sunday nights that the Push talked about religion. Lawrence would pull out the sofa and build up a roaring fire: then with the aid of pipes and much swallowing of beer they would set about it. Every Sunday Rendell was pilloried, but the victim never objected and always returned to the combat. The great point about religious discussion is that you can never be beaten. They treated either with the truth of Christianity or the value of its practical results. In the latter case Lawrence would boom about bishops with fifteen thousand a year, and Martin would demonstrate with irrefutable logic that religion had always resisted freedom and education and had made the world the hole it is. As they both talked interminably Rendell had little opportunity of answering. One night Lawrence rushed into his rooms shortly after dinner and found the Push assembled. "My god!" he said, plunging into the sofa. "I thought you hadn't one," said Chard. "Don't be obvious. I'm angry, my god, I'm angry." He was asked to explain. "Steel-Brockley asked me to go to coffee in his rooms and when I got there I found he had provided a lecturer gassing about the value of faith for us." "Well," said Davenant, "that was very considerate of our Brockley." "Exactly. But he might have warned me. It didn't matter. I couldn't stick it long." "I should think not. It's barely a half-an-hour since dinner now." "What happened?" asked Martin. "It was like this," began Lawrence. "Brockley produced a battered chap from the colonies, all pockmarks and freckles, you know the type. Of course he began, as they always do, by saying that he had seen men die in all parts of the world and they all died the better for their faith. None of them seemed to live, or else he had a morbid mind and likes death. I don't know. Anyhow he had the cheek to say that King's spiritual life wasn't as strong as it had been. He was deeply concerned about us. He whined about us. He thought we were all going to the devil because the scholars have taken to cutting chapel. Just imagine a little tick like that coming here to tell us, whom he doesn't know, that we're not so soulful as the clean young men out West. Thank god we're not. I gave him about ten minutes and cleared out." There was a murmur of delight. "I suppose no one heard you leave the room," said Martin, but Lawrence never rose to jests about his bulk and gait. "And there were all Brockley's gang," he went on, "sitting with all the light of grace in their eyes. And when the pock-marked chap got busy in the impressive line you could fairly hear them thinking, 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'"