Amberley shook his head.
"It's specious," he replied, "and it's doubtless highly comforting for the startling moral failure. But I find a difficulty in adjusting my obstinate mind to the point of view."
"It is difficult," Lothian said, "but that's because so few people are psychologists, and so few people—the Priests often seem to me less than any one—understand the meaning of Christianity. But because David was a murderer and an adulterer will you tell me that the psalms are insincere? Surely, if all that is good in a man or woman is to be invalidated by the presence of contradictory evil, then Beelzebub must sit enthroned and be potent over the affairs of men!"
Mr. Amberley rose from his chair. His face had quite lost its watchful expression. It was genial and pleased as before.
"King David has a great deal to answer for," he said. "I don't know what the unorthodox and the 'live-your-own-life' school would do without him. But let us go into the drawing room."
With his rich, hearty laugh echoing under the Waggon roof, the big man thrust his arm through Lothian's.
"There are two girls dying to talk to the poet!" he said. "That I happen to know! My daughter Muriel reads your books in bed, I believe! and her friend Miss Wallace was saying all sorts of nice things about you at dinner. Come along, come along, my dear boy."
The two men left the dining room, and their voices could be heard in the hall beyond.
Toftrees lingered behind for a moment with young Dickson Ingworth.
The boy's face was flushed. His eyes sparkled with excitement and the three glasses of champagne he had drunk at dinner were having their influence with him.