In what part of London do you think of settling? John Eglinton asked, as we passed out of the Library.

I haven't given the matter a thought, I answered.

The fireman accosted John in the vestibule, and we waited till the last stragglers had passed out and the great doors were closed.

Would you care for a walk down the Pembroke Road and back by Northumberland Road over the canal bridge before going to bed?

Of course I should; I haven't been out all day, but—

You're tired?

No, I'm not tired; and in the hope that he would not speak again of my departure from Ireland, I fell into his step, a little annoyed with myself, however, for I had not spoken truthfully when I said: I haven't given the matter a thought. I had even written to Tonks asking him to look out for a house for me, and he had found a house that would suit me in Swan Walk; his letter was in my pocket, and during my walk with John I could read in my thoughts: You had better come over and see it at once, for it is one of those houses that do not remain long without a tenant. I remarked whenever the conversation dropped: I shall have to warn all my friends in London of my coming, and when John bade me good night I returned to Ely Place determined to answer Tonks's letter before going to bed. But something held me back, and turning from the writing-table I said: Tomorrow morning; and every morning after breakfast from that day on I was held back whenever I approached the writing-table with the intention of writing to Tonks. And it may have been to get the house in Swan Walk behind me that I wrote to Dujardin, who is always looking forward to seeing me in an appartement in Paris with five or six rooms and enough wall space for my pictures, and pleasant armchairs in which we could sit smoking cigars and discussing The Source of the Christian River. A few weeks later he wrote saying he had discovered the needed appartement and would I come over at once? My trouble, said I to myself, has been transferred from London to Paris. I must write to the landlord of number four, Ely Place, telling him that I intend to give up the house at the end of the lease. But half-way across the carpet on my way to the writing-table I was stopped by an inexplicable apathy, and feeling a little scared went out for a walk and brooded on Rome and Canterbury.

There are past moments that retain the sensual conviction of a present moment, and one of these is the September evening of which I am speaking; a dark evening it was under the trees at the corner of the Appian Way. I must have come through the Clyde Road, admiring as I passed the tall pillared porticoes which give the villas a certain elegance, and the lofty trees, elms, beeches, dense chestnuts, and dark hollies, amid which the villas stand. In my humour it was a sort of solace to stop and to remember Auteuil. The rue de Ranelagh exists, doesn't it? Elle donne sur la rue de l'Assomption, n'est-ce pas? Some such random association of names may have caused me to keep to the left in the direction of Upper Leeson Street, or it may have been that I kept on that way because the Tyrrells lived there before they went to live in Clonskeagh. I am aware of that dark September night at the corner of the Appian Way as I am of the moment I am now living, the sky grey above the trees and a sycamore leaf fluttering down from a great bough to my feet, and myself, yielding to a vague feeling of apprehension, stepping aside to avoid treading on it, and it was immediately after the fall of that leaf that temptation rose again, coming up, as it were, out of my very bowels; yet the temptation was not of a woman or any part of a woman, but a desire to enter the Irish Church in the sense of identifying myself with it.

Hitherto my desire had been merely to dissociate myself from a Church which I deemed shameful, whereas I was now conscious of a desire of unity with a Church in sympathy with my religious aspirations ... to some extent. But I had promised the Colonel not to declare myself a Protestant, meaning thereby that I would not write to the papers on the subject, nor call Dublin together to hear a lecture on the incompatibility of Literature and Dogma. But my promise to the Colonel, I said, keeps me out of St Patrick's every Sunday. For me to be seen there every Sunday would be equivalent to a declaration of Protestantism. And to be kept out of my Cathedral is a great privation, for I should like to go there occasionally and to pray with the congregation; to pray to whom I know not, but I should like to pray. A little later I found myself standing before a tall iron gate peering through the bars, admiring some golden tassels. Golden rod, I said, and the borders, I am sure, are blue with lobelia. A sudden scent of honey warned me that arabis was there in plenty, and I walked on thinking of a dense cushion of pure white flowers till my steps were again stayed, and this time it was by the sight of—. The tree seemed like a quince, but the quince does not bear pink and white blossom, a bell-shapen blossom like a mallow. But neither tree nor shrub flowers at the end of August, and I walked on in a dream, awakened by another garden gate over which a syringa had flourished two months ago. Has heaven a more delectable scent than the remembrance of a syringa in bloom? I asked, and it was on my way home from Clonskeagh that I said to myself: Now if I go to London to see the house that Steer and Tonks have found in Swan Walk, or to Paris to view the appartement in the Boulevard St Germain that Dujardin has discovered, I shall not be able to declare my Protestant faith. Why not? I asked. Why not? And the answer came quickly: for there is nobody in London or Paris interested in such questions. So that is why I hesitate to write to my friends to announce my departure from Dublin, and the source of the lie that I told John on the night he invited me to walk with him down the Pembroke Road and back to Northumberland Road over the canal bridge before going to bed. How little do we know of ourselves! I muttered, and again I walked on, this time my mind awake and myself not a little frightened, for it seemed certain that I was prompted by an unworthy motive to declare myself a Protestant. Can I accept Protestantism wholeheartedly? I asked, and I remembered John Eglinton's words: The Archbishop will certainly ask you if you can accept the divinity of our Lord. He will ask, too, if I can accept the resurrection of the body; and till I reached Ely Place I did not cease to seek in my memory for the passage in Corinthians, in which St Paul is at pains to elucidate the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The apostle is anxious to convince his converts and himself. He is troubled by doubts, doubts that my Archbishop does not share for reasons he has discovered, and his reasons he will lay before me fully. All will then be well. Hereupon I walked to the writing-table and wrote:

Your Grace: For the last three years, since I came to live in Ireland, my thoughts have been directed towards religion, and I have come to see that Christianity in its purest form is to be found in the Anglican rather than in the Church of Rome. I am anxious to become a member of your Church, and shall be glad to hear from your Grace regarding the steps I am to take.

After addressing the letter I stood for a long time admiring it and trying to collect my thoughts sufficiently to decide whether I should take the letter to his Grace's house and drop it into his box myself, or post it in the pillar. It should come to him through the post, I said, and after posting it I returned home and slept easier that night. And after breakfast my thoughts went at once to the Book, and by midday many spurious passages had been discovered—for instance, that very commonplace, reeking-of-Bishop passage: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,—a passage so obviously needful for the founding of a Church that the policeman round the corner, if one were to bring him in, would say, Well, sir, it doesn't look much like the genuine article, do it? We'd call it fake up at the station. Yes, of course, fake—and the most blatant fake. It was necessary to have Christ's authority for an apostolic succession and the right to collect money, to lay down the law, to judge others—all the things that Christ expressly declared should not be done; and in my indignation I compared the ordinary Christians, who accept this piece of ecclesiasticism as Christ's words, to the artistic people we meet every day who admire equally Botticelli, Burne-Jones, Corot, Sir Alfred East, Turgenev, and Mrs Humphry Ward. The common man, I said, makes the same mess of pottage out of religion as he does out of art.

This sad thought caused me to drop into a long meditation, and I remembered, on awaking, that the passage from Matthew, the utility of which the policeman round the corner could not fail to see, had been improved upon by the Bishop who wrote about one hundred and fifty years after the Crucifixion. The need for a more explicit text than the one from Matthew had begun to be felt, and the Bishop supplied, Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. And, so disturbed was I by the retouching of the text by ecclesiastics that I resolved to compile for my own use and benefit a list of the authentic sayings, and, calling Miss Gough, I dictated them to her, adding as a little appendix all the words that had obviously been inserted by the Fathers; for instance, Be not angry with thy brother without just cause.

Without just cause degrades Christ. These three words turn him into a reasonable and commonplace person. It will be interesting, Miss Gough, to have the Archbishop's opinion upon these texts when I go to the Palace.

She answered that it would be indeed interesting, and I began to wonder why Dr Peacock had delayed to answer my letter; my letter was one that needed an answer by return of post. For his Grace cannot be without knowledge of the anxiety of mind that religious questions cause those who are sincerely religious, anxious at all costs to themselves to arrive at the truth. Miss Gough's explanation was that his Grace might not be at the Palace, and this seeming to me not unlikely, for we were in September and the month was a fine one, I opened my Bible, and turning to the Acts, which is probably the earliest Christian document, I read: But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. Whether Peter was ever Bishop of Rome is a matter on which ecclesiastical authorities are undecided, but there can be no doubt that he was, and is, and ever will be, Parish Priest in the county of Galway. Stephen was stoned in the streets of Jerusalem, and Paul standing by, I said, and rushed on to the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. It was not, however, until Paul bade goodbye to his disciples and friends at Ephesus that he won all my admiration and instinctive sympathy. In this most beautiful farewell, one of the most moving and touching things in literature, Paul takes us to his bosom; two thousand years cannot separate us—we become one with Paul and glorify God in him.

And these noble verses are not Paul's single contribution to the Acts; he is so evident in these narratives of adventure that it is difficult to imagine how they came to be attributed to Luke. The narrative of the shipwreck and the journey to Rome could only have been written by a man of literary genius, and there are never two at the same time. The trial at Caesarea is Paul's own rendering of his defence. Of course it is, and I wondered how any one could have entertained, even for a moment, the notion that Luke made it up. How did he make it up? From hearsay? Blind men and deaf knowing nothing of the art of writing! Luke may have edited Paul's manuscripts, and his recension may be the farewell at Ephesus, the trial at Caesarea, and the journey to Rome. But it is certain that Paul's voice, and no other voice, is heard in these narratives; and it is a voice that is always distinguishable from every other voice. We do not hear it in the Epistle to the Hebrews, nor do we hear it in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians, a chapter which I have no hesitation whatever in taking from Paul and attributing to a disciple of John's. But I do not know if any other exegetist has rejected this chapter. Many have rejected the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Philippians, the first and second Corinthians, but it seems to me that I hear Paul's voice in all of these. The Archbishop will no doubt be surprised that I should admit so much. All will go well if he doesn't press upon me the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The postman's knock startled me out of my meditation, and Teresa brought me his Grace's letter on a silver salver; treasured it was for many years, lost, unfortunately, as were some of Pater's letters.

Dr Peacock began his letter by explaining that he was staying at the seaside with his family, and there had been some delay at the Palace in forwarding my letter. He confessed to a great joy on hearing that my coming to Ireland had been the means of leading me back to Christ; and he admitted, I think, that there might be many little points which he would be able to clear up for me, but as he was not returning to Dublin for some weeks the most natural course, he said, was to send my letter to my parish priest, who would call upon me.

The words parish priest always seemed to me to savour of Rome, and the Archbishop's letter slipped from my fingers, and I sat for a long time thinking of what this Archbishop was like. His name conveyed the idea of a tall, formal man, and perhaps the interview would have been a very stiff and formal affair, myself and the Archbishop on either side of a mahogany table covered with papers and piles of letters held together by elastic bands. My parish priest, the Reverend Gilbert Mahaffy, had been my neighbour for a long time; the Rectory was No. 13 Ely Place, one door from the great iron gateway that divides my little cul-de-sac from Ely Place. He was known as a man of the very kindliest disposition. I had often heard Gill speak of his work among the poor, of his effusive enthusiasm and energy. A rare soul, I had often said as he passed me on his charitable errands, absorbed in his thoughts, his short legs moving so quickly under the long frock-coat buttoned to the chin, that he seemed to be running. I could recall the high shoulders showing straight and pointed, the wide head shaded by the soft felt hat, the large straight nose, the cheeks and chin covered with a soft greying beard, and the kindly eyes—Eyes, I said, that always seem to be on the lookout for somebody's trouble.

Gilbert Mahaffy's appearance had appealed to me, winning me before a word had been exchanged between us; all the same, I was conscious of a little resentment. He had never called upon me; he looked the other way when we passed in the street, treating me exactly like poor Cunningham. It seemed to me that he should have called upon me when I came to Dublin first, and not waited for the Archbishop to tell him to call. However, there it was; he was coming to see me. And taking up the New Testament once more, I fell to thinking what his literary and critical qualifications were. A good man he certainly is, but from his appearance one would hardly credit him with a subtle mind; and a subtle mind seemed to be necessary ... in my case. We are safe if we admit that Jesus was God and was sent by his Father into the world to atone by his death on the Cross for the sins of men. But Jesus in his own words seems to deny the enormous pretensions that the ecclesiastics would cast upon him. In Matthew he says, Why does thou call me good? None is good but God, and no less striking words were uttered by him on the Cross: My God, why hast thou abandoned me? The Colonel had once reminded me that Jesus had said, Before Abraham was, I am, but these Orientals spoke in images, and it is easy to understand that we all were before Abraham, that is to say, before Abraham existed in the flesh. But the words, Why dost thou call me good? None is good but God, seemed to me very difficult to explain away, and the words spoken on the Cross even more so. Nor is it very clear that Paul believed in the separate Divinity of Christ. Christ will disappear in the end to be merged into his Father. A puzzling view of Christ's Divinity, I said, and sat for a long time looking into the fire, thinking how pleasant it would be if Mahaffy were here, we two sitting on either side of the fire, our Bibles on our knees.

It was the next day that my servant told me the Reverend Mr Mahaffy had called. Retreat is now out of the question, I said. Tomorrow he'll call again; or perhaps he'll wait for me to return his visit, and for me to return it will be more polite. But it is impossible to wait till tomorrow. I must talk the matter out with somebody. Why not with Sir Thornley? Only he is generally occupied with patients at this hour.

You know, I've been thinking of joining the Church of Ireland for some time.

So I have heard it said, but I thought it was one of your jokes.

One doesn't choose such subjects for joking; and I showed him the Archbishop's letter. Now, what is to be done? The Reverend Gilbert Mahaffy called this afternoon, and he'll call tomorrow if I don't return his visit. It will be better, I think, to call upon him this evening and get it over, only I can't think what he'll say to me. Can you give me any idea?

He'll ask you if you abjure the errors of Rome.

He can't ask that, because I never believed in Rome. Do you think he'll ask me to say a prayer with him?

Sir Thornley began to laugh, and his laughter shocked me a little, but I did not get up to leave the room until he said:

Did the Archbishop send you an order for coals and blankets?

I wonder how you, who are a Protestant, and respect your religion—I wonder what your co-religionists—and without attempting to finish my sentence I walked out of the room abruptly, and opened the hall-door, but had to draw back into the hall, for Gilbert Mahaffy was coming down Hume Street, and, thinking of him in his strenuous, useful life, I came to be ashamed of the disappointment I had experienced when the Archbishop had referred my spiritual needs to him instead of undertaking them himself. No man, I said, is more likely to inspire in me the faith I am seeking.... After dinner I will call upon him.

My dinner was hardly tasted that evening, so perturbed was I; and I still can recall the glow behind the houses as I went towards the gateway.

Is Mr Mahaffy at home?

Yes, sir.

Portentous words, and the study itself portentous in its simplicity. I had just time to look over the great writing-table covered with papers—all on parochial business, I said—before he entered. He came running into the room, his eyes and his hands welcoming me.

I'm so glad to see you.

We have lived near each other for a long time, I answered, and I have often wished to know you, Mr Mahaffy.

Yes; His Grace asked me to call. Yes-s.

In moments of great mental excitement one notices everything, and Mr Mahaffy's manner of saying yes-s, trying to turn the word from a monosyllable to a dissyllable, and his habit of rubbing his hands after the pronunciation, struck me. And very nervously I began to explain that I had written to the Archbishop, saying that since I had come to live in Ireland—

His Grace sent me your letter—yes-s.

You see, Mr Mahaffy, in England one has no opportunity of noticing the evil influence of the Church of Rome; it wasn't until I came here.... It seemed to me that I had better tell him of my great discovery—the illiteracy of Rome since the Reformation. I did—without, however, interesting him very deeply. He is more interested in the theological side of the question, I said to myself, and sought for a transitional phrase, but before finding one Mr Mahaffy mentioned Newman, and I told him that Newman could hardly write English at all, at which he showed some surprise. The Roman Church relies upon its converts, for after two or three generations of Catholicism the intelligence dies.

It was plain to me that the conversation was not altogether to his taste, and, thinking to interest him, I said:

You know, Cardinal Manning was of this opinion. He told a friend of mine that he was glad he had been brought up a Protestant.

Did he? I didn't know that.

And, my thoughts running on ahead, I began to describe a new Utopia—a State so well ordered that no one in it was allowed to be a Papist unless he or she could prove some bodily or mental infirmity, or until he or she had attained a certain age, which put them beyond the business of the world—the age of seventy, perhaps, the earliest at which a conversion would be legal. A sort of spiritual Old Age Pension Scheme, I said; and a picture rose up before my mind of a crowd of young and old, all inferior, physically or intellectually, struggling round the door of a Roman Catholic Church, with papers in their hands, on the first Friday of every month.

It is quite possible, Mr Moore, that there is more intelligence in Protestantism than in Catholicism; but the question before us is hardly one of literature. In the letter to His Grace I understand you to say that Christianity is to be found in its purest form in the Anglican Church. We are concerned, really, with spiritual rather than with aesthetic truths.

You are quite right. Perhaps I was wrong; but a sense of humour does not preclude sincerity, and many reasons lead one towards spiritual truth. If I introduced aesthetics into our conversation, it was because I have spoken to Catholics on this matter, and they have always, with one exception—a convert—failed to put the case as you did—that religion really has nothing to do with aesthetics.

The interview had certainly taken an unexpected turn, and an unfortunate one, and while I was thinking of something to say to Mr Mahaffy, he asked me suddenly if he were to understand that I accepted the Divinity of our Lord?

Of course I am aware that you accept the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in a very literal sense, but is it sure that we do not mean the same thing in the end? All things tend towards God, and what is highest in Nature is nearest to God, and certainly Jesus Christ was the noblest human being in many respects that ever lived.

A cloud had come into his face, and, seeing that it was deepening, I became more sincere in the sense that I tried to get nearer to the truth.

I should like to believe as you do, to share your belief.

And you will, he said. You will be with us one of these days if you aren't with us wholly today, and we talked on religious subjects until it was time for me to go. Then he asked me to come again; I promised to do so in a few days, and went away asking myself if it were ever likely that I should be able to answer truthfully and say Yes, I believe in the Divinity of Christ as you do. I should have to know exactly what he meant, and it is doubtful if he would be able to tell me, for we cannot understand God, and if we cannot understand what God is, how is it that we speak of the Son of God? St Paul himself had no conception of the Trinity. If Christ were God, equal to his Father, how is it that—what are Paul's words?—Christ will disappear in the end to be merged into his Father? It is all very puzzling.

A few days after I went again to see Mr Mahaffy, and I remember telling him that I had been questioning myself on the subject of Christ's Divinity.

You see, Mr Mahaffy, one doesn't know what one believes. None of us thinks alike, and no man can tell his soul to another. Is it not sufficient if I say that in my belief there is more Divinity in Christ than in any other human being?

You say in your letter to the Archbishop that you wished to join the communion of the Anglican Church, and the belief of that communion is not so vague as yours, Mr Moore. We believe that Christ is the Son of God, and came into the world to redeem the world from sin, that he died on the Cross and rose three days afterwards from the dead, ascended into Heaven—

Tolstoy didn't believe in the physical resurrection, and it may be doubted if St Paul believed in it; yet you will not deny that Tolstoy was a Christian.

He was a Christian, no doubt, but not in the full sense of the word as we understand it.

Well, St Paul. I take my stand upon Paul, Mr Mahaffy. He seems to have had very little sense of the Trinity. Paul was a Unitarian. The passage in which he says that Christ will disappear in the end to be merged into his Father....

We wrangled about texts for a long time, Mahaffy quoting one, I quoting another, until it seemed impolite for me to press my point further; and accepting him as an authority, I bade him good night, asking him when I might see him again.

Three days afterwards I was again in the Rectory, and we talked for an hour together and parted on the same terms.

I shall be in tomorrow evening. Will you come to see me?

I promised I would, and all the time I felt that this evening would not end without his asking me to say a prayer with him, and the thought of the prayer haunted my mind all the time I was speaking to him, and when I rose to go the long-expected words came.

Will you say a prayer with me?

He went down upon his knees, and I repeated the Lord's Prayer after him.

I have been dreading this prayer all the week, and I could hardly conquer my fear, and at the same time a force behind myself prompted me to you.

Let me give you a Prayer-book, he said, and I returned home to read it absorbed in a deep emotion, for the prayer said with Mr Mahaffy had come out of my heart, and the memory of it continued to burn, shedding a soft radiance. How happy I am! What a blessed peace this is! My difficulties have melted away, and it no longer seems to matter to me whether the world thinks me Catholic or Protestant; I am with Christ.

But the storm of life is never over until it ceases for ever, and before a week had gone by a copy of an Irish review came to me, containing a criticism of my book, The Untilled Field; himself a Catholic were the words that upset my mental balance, forcing me into an uncontrollable rage. Is this shame eternal? I cried. Of what use is writing? I have been writing all my life that I never had hand, act, or part—

Very little emotion robs me of words, and, with a great storm raging within my breast, I walked about the room, conscious that a great injustice was being done to me. Merely because my father was a Papist am I to remain one? Despite long protests and practice, not only this paper calls me a Catholic, but Edward, my most intimate friend, calls me one. His words are: You are a bad Catholic; but you are a Catholic; and he persists in those words, though, according to the Catholic Church, I am not one, never having acquiesced in any of its dogmas. He continues to reiterate the shameful accusation—shameful to me, at least. His mind is so stultified in superstitions that he does not remember that those who do not confess and communicate cease to belong to the Roman Church. I believe that to be the rule, and if I remind him of it his face becomes overcast. Any thought of transgression frightens him; but so paralysed is his mind, that he clings to the base superstition that if a little water is poured on the head of an infant in a Catholic Church the child remains a Catholic, just as a child born of black parents remains a nigger, no matter what country he is born in or the nationality he elects. Now I wonder if it be orthodox to hold that a Sacrament confers benefits on the recipient without some co-operation on the part of the recipient? I suppose that is Roman Catholic doctrine; even if the recipient protests the Sacrament overrules his objections. We live in a mad world, my masters! But I think Edward goes a step further than Catholic doctrine warrants him to do. He seems to hold that Catholic baptism confers perpetual Catholicism on the individual. I do his theology a wrong. If you aren't a Catholic, why don't you become a Protestant? he said at Tillyra. I corrected him. One doesn't become a Protestant, I said; but the correction was wasted. His theological knowledge is slight, but he knows the country—his own phrase, I know the country—and in Ireland one must be one or the other.

A light seemed to break in my mind suddenly; I remembered that the welcome the priests had given Edward VII when he came to Ireland had not pleased the patriotic Gaelic League, and it occurred to me that I might get a nice revenge for the words himself a Catholic if I were to write to the Irish Times declaring that I had passed from the Church of Rome to the Church of Ireland, shocked beyond measure at the lack of patriotism of the Irish priests. Nothing will annoy them more, and in this I shall not be writing a lie. Magicians I have called them, and with good reason. Their magical powers are as great in politics as in religion, for haven't they persuaded Ireland to accept them as patriots?

I wrote for an hour, and then went out in search of AE: it is essential to consult AE on every matter of importance, and the matter on which I was about to consult him seemed to me of the very highest. The night was Thursday, and every Thursday night, after finishing the last pages of The Homestead, he goes to the Hermetic Society to teach till eleven o'clock. But the rooms were not known to me, and I must have met a member of the Society who directed me to the house in Dawson Street, a great decaying building let out in rooms, traversed by dusty passages, intersected by innumerable staircases; and through this great ramshackle I wandered, losing myself again and again. The doors were numbered, but the number I sought seemed undiscoverable. At last, at the end of a short, dusty corridor, I found the number I was seeking, and on opening the door caught sight of AE among his disciples. He was sitting at a bare table, teaching, and his disciples sat on chairs, circle-wise, listening. There was a lamp on the table, and it lit up his ardent, earnest face, and some of the faces of the men and women, others were lost in shadows. He bade me welcome, and continued to teach as if I had not been there. He even appealed to me on one occasion, but the subject was foreign to me, and it was impossible to detach my thoughts from the business on which I had come to speak to him. It seemed as if the disciples would never leave. The last stragglers clung about him, and I wondered why he did not send them away; but AE never tries to rid himself of anybody, not even the most importunate. At last the door closed, and I was free to tell him that it was impossible for me to bear with this constantly recurring imputation of Catholicism any longer.

I have written a letter, I said, which should bring it to an end and for ever. But before publishing it I should like to show it to you; it may contain things of which you would not approve. The pages were spread upon the table, and AE began to suggest emendations. The phrases I had written would wound many people, and AE is instinctively against wounding anybody. But his emendations seemed to me to destroy the character of my letter, and I said:

AE, I can't accept your alterations. It has come to me to write this letter. You see, I am speaking out of a profound conviction.

Then, my dear Moore, if you feel the necessity of speech as much as that, and the conviction is within you, it is not for me to advise you. You have been advised already.