"Phil," he said, "will you go out with me for a walk this afternoon?"
"Of course," Ashe answered. "Don't we always go together?"
Wynne laughed, turning to look at his companion as if from afar.
"I doubt," he observed, "if anything I could tell you directly would give you so good an idea of how upset I am, and how completely out of the routine of our life, as the fact that I seem to have forgotten that there ever were any walks before."
"I am afraid that I am a good deal out of touch with the life here,"
Ashe responded seriously. "I have been troubled, and tempted, and—Oh,
Maurice," he broke off suddenly, "Maynard is right: no spiritual calm
is possible in the world outside!"
"Even if that were true," returned Maurice, "I don't know that I am prepared to agree that calm is the best thing in life."
"It is the highest thing."
"I don't believe it. It isn't growth."
The bell for study sounded, and ended their talk. Maurice went to his work uneasy, perhaps a little irritated. He was disquieted that Philip should be so monastically out of sympathy, and he was annoyed with himself for being out of key with his friend. He felt as if he had returned to his old place in the body without being here at all in the spirit. He had while at Mrs. Staggchase's looked into many books which in the Clergy House would never have come in his way; he had more than once been startled to encounter thoughts which had been in his own mind, but which he had felt it wrong to entertain. Here they were stated coolly, dispassionately, with no consciousness, apparently, that they should not be considered with frankness. He had heard opinions and ideas which from the standpoint of the religious ascetic were not only heretical but little short of blasphemous, yet they were evidently the ordinary current thought of the time. It was impossible that these things should not affect him; and to-day as he sat in lecture he found himself trying all that was said by a new standard and involuntarily taking the position of an objector. He was able to see nothing but flaws in the logic, faults in the deduction, breaks in the argument.
"I am come to that state of mind when I should see a seam in the seamless robe," he groaned in spirit.