'Is that the most important thing? Is it not more important that he should know that you were his son? That he should support, guide, educate you, even though unseen? Do you not know that some one has been doing that?' 'That I have been supported, guided, educated, I know full well; but by whom I know not. And I know, too, that I have been punished. And therefore--therefore I cannot free the thought of a Him--of a Person--only of a Destiny, of Laws and Powers, which have no faces wherewith to frown awful wrath upon me! If it be a Person who has been leading me, I must go mad, or know that He has forgiven!' 'I conceive that it is He, and not punishment which you fear?' Lancelot was silent a moment. . . . 'Yes. He, and not hell at all, is what I fear. He can inflict no punishment on me worse than the inner hell which I have felt already, many and many a time.' 'Bona verba! That is an awful thing to say: but better this extreme than the other. . . . And you would--what?' 'Be pardoned.' 'If He loves you, He has pardoned you already.' 'How do I know that He loves me?' 'How does Tregarva?' 'He is a righteous man, and I--' 'Am a sinner. He would, and rightly, call himself the same.' 'But he knows that God loves him--that he is God's child.' 'So, then, God did not love him till he caused God to love him, by knowing that He loved him? He was not God's child till he made himself one, by believing that he was one when as yet he was not? I appeal to common sense and logic . . . It was revealed to Tregarva that God had been loving him while he was yet a bad man. If He loved him, in spite of his sin, why should He not have loved you?' 'If He had loved me, would He have left me in ignorance of Himself? For if He be, to know Him is the highest good.' 'Had he left Tregarva in ignorance of Himself?' 'No. . . . Certainly, Tregarva spoke of his conversion as of a turning to one of whom he had known all along, and disregarded.' 'Then do you turn like him, to Him whom you have known all along, and disregarded.' 'I?' 'Yes--you! If half I have heard and seen of you be true, He has been telling you more, and not less, of Himself than He does to most men. You, for aught I know, may know more of Him than Tregarva does. The gulf between you and him is this: he has obeyed what he knew--and you have not.' . . . Lancelot paused a moment, then-- 'No!--do not cheat me! You said once that you were a churchman.' 'So I am. A Catholic of the Catholics. What then?'