He walked round St. James’s Square, for the night was warm and fine. His mind was not conscious of having received anything during the previous two hours upon which it would be profitable to ponder. He thought over the question which he had put to himself previously—the question of how he could bind Beatrice to him—how he could make her certainly his own, and thus banish that cold distrust of which he now and again became aware—no, it was not exactly distrust, it was only a slightly defective link in the chain of complete trust.
She loved him and she promised to love him. He reflected upon this, and he asked himself what more could he want. What bond stronger than her word could he desire to have?
“Oh, I will trust her for ever—for ever,” he murmured. “If she is not true, then there never was truth on earth.”
He fancied that he had dismissed the matter from his mind with this exorcism.
And so he had.
But it so happens that some persons are so constituted that there is but the slenderest connection between their mind and their heart. Something that appeals very forcibly to their mind will not touch their heart in the least. They are Nature’s “sports.”
Harold Wynne was one of these people. He had made up his mind that, on the question of implicitly trusting Beatrice, nothing more remained to be said. There was still, however, that cold finger upon his heart.
But having made up his mind that nothing more remained to be said on the question, he was logical enough—for logic is also a mental attribute, though by no means universally distributed—to think of other matters.
He began to think about Mr. Playdell, and his zeal for the reform of Archie. Harold’s respect for Mr. Playdell had materially increased since the morning. At first he had been inclined to look with suspicion upon the man who had, by the machinery of the Church, been prohibited from discharging the functions of a priest of that Church, though, of course, he was free to exercise that unimportant function known as preaching. He could not preach within a church, however. If he wished to try and save souls by preaching, that was his own business. He would not do so with the sanction of the Church. He was anxious to save the soul of Archie Brown, at any rate. He assumed that Archie had a soul in embryo, ready to be hatched, and it was clear to Harold that Mr. Playdell was anxious to save it from being addled before it had pecked its way out of its shell. Therefore Harold had a considerable respect for Mr. Playdell, though he had been one of the unprofitable servants of the Church.
He thought of the earnest words of the man—of the earnest way in which he had begged to be given the chance of returning the service, which he believed was about to be done to him by Harold.