And he described to her—while she shivered a little and drew herself together—the provocations which were leading him into a tussle with the North R—— Club.
'They have given me a very civil invitation. They are the sort of men after all whom it pays to get hold of, if one can. Among their fellows, they are the men who think. One longs to help them to think to a little more purpose.'
'What have you to give them, Robert?' asked Catherine after a pause, her eyes bent on the child's stocking she was knitting. Her heart was full enough already, poor soul. Oh, the bitterness of this Passion week! He had been at her side often in church, but through all his tender silence and consideration she had divined the constant struggle in him between love and intellectual honesty, and it had filled her with a dumb irritation and misery indescribable. Do what she would, wrestle with herself as she would, there was constantly emerging in her now a note of anger, not with Robert, but, as it were, with those malign forces of which he was the prey.
'What have I to give them?' he repeated sadly. 'Very little, Catherine, as it seems to me to-night. But come and see.'
His tone had a melancholy which went to her heart. In reality he was in that state of depression which often precedes a great effort. But she was startled by his suggestion.
'Come with you, Robert? To the meeting of a secularist club!'
'Why not? I shall be there to protest against outrage to what both you and I hold dear. And the men are decent fellows. There will be no disturbance.'
'What are you going to do?' she asked in a low voice.
'I have been trying to think it out,' he said with difficulty. 'I want simply, if I can, to transfer to their minds that image of Jesus of Nazareth which thought, and love, and reading have left upon my own. I want to make them realise for themselves the historical character, so far as it can be realised—to make them see for themselves the real figure, as it went in and out amongst men—so far as our eyes can now discern it.'