"I allude to a series of libels which were directed against me in the newspapers, especially in Catholic newspapers—dirty Keltic wood-pulp——"
"Precisely. But why was that an occasion for drawing what you call a sharp line across your life?"
"Eminency," said George, calming down and setting out to be concise and categorical, "scores of people who had known me all my life must have seen that those attacks were libellous, and false. You yourself must have seen that." He stretched out a hand and opened and shut it, as though claws protruded from velvet and retired. "Yet only a single one out of all those scores came forward to assure me of friendship in that dreadful moment. All the rest spewed their bile or licked their lips in unctuous silence. I was left to bear the brunt alone, except for that one; and he was not a Catholic. Except from him, I had no sympathy and no comfort whatever. I don't know any case in all my reading, to say nothing of my experience, where a man had a better or a clearer or a more convincing test of the trueness and the falseness of his friends. Not to do any man an injustice, and that no one might call me rash or precipitate in my decision, I waited two years—two whole years. The Bishop of Caerleon came to me in this period of isolation; and one other Catholic, a man of my own trade. Later, that one betrayed me again, so I will say no more of him. Women, of course, I neglect. And the rest unanimously held aloof. Then I published a book; and I told my publishers to refuse all letters which might be addressed to them for me. The sharp line was drawn. I wanted no more fair-weather friends, afraid to stand by me in storms. If, after those two awful years, I had received overtures from my former acquaintances, I really think I should have fulminated at them St. Matthew xxv. 41-43——"
"What is that?"
"'I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat' down to 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into æonial fire.' Yes, the sharp line was drawn across my life. I had one true friend, a protestant. As for the Faith, I found it comfortable. As for the Faithful, I found them intolerable. The Bishop of Caerleon at present is the exception which proves the rule, because he came to me in the teeth of calumny."
"You are hard, Mr. Rose, very hard."
"I am what you and your Catholics have made me."
"Poor child—poor child," the cardinal adjected.
"I request that Your Eminency will not speak to me in that tone. I disdain your pity at this date. The catastrophe is complete. I nourish no grudge, and seek no revenge, no, nor even justice. I am content to live my own life, avoiding all my brother-Catholics, or treating them with severe forbearance when circumstances throw them in my path. I don't squash cockroaches."
"The effect on your own soul?"