"You give me no response,"—continued Brent, with sudden querulousness—"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do—and you will not say it. Now you never were secretive—you never said one thing and meant another—so speak the truth as you have always done! I AM changed, am I not?"
"You are,"—replied Walden, steadily—"But I cannot tell how, or in what way. You look ill and worn out. You are overworked and overwrought—but I think there is something else at the root of the evil;—something that has happened during the last seven years. You are not quite the man you were when you came to consecrate my church at St. Rest."
"St. Rest!" repeated the Bishop, musingly—"What a sweet name it is- -what a still sweeter suggestion! Rest—rest!—and a saint's rest too!—that perfect rest granted to all the martyrs for Christ!—how safe and peaceful!—how sure and glorious! Would that such rest were mine! But I see nothing ahead of me but storm and turmoil, and stress of anguish and heartbreak, ending in—Nothingness!"
Walden bent a little more forward and looked his friend full in the eyes.
"What is wrong, Harry?" he asked, with exceeding gentleness.
At the old schoolboy name of bygone years, Brent caught and pressed his hand with strong fervour. A smile lighted his eyes.
"John, my boy, everything is wrong!" he said—"As wrong as ever my work at college was, before you set it right. Do you think I forget! Everything is wrong, I tell you! I am wrong,—my thoughts are wrong,—and my conscience leaves me no peace day or night! I ought not to be a Bishop—for I feel that the Church itself is wrong!"
John sat quiet for a minute. Then he said—
"So it is in many ways. The Church is a human attempt to build humanity up on a Divine model, and it has its human limitations. But the Divine model endures!"
Brent threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes.