Paul did not pursue the complication. Mr. Thornton was a photographer in Edward Street, a highly respectable person, a member of his father's church, but not within the circle of his father's actual friends. The mention of him gave Paul a slight jar about Edith. He knew well enough that if he had been seeing Madeline home, his mother would have been highly delighted, but that she would be slightly uneasy at hearing that he had been with Edith. But he was just discovering Edith. He liked Madeline—she was far too pretty, with her fair hair and big eyes and nicely-tempered lady-like admiration, not to be liked. At the last school-treat—oh well, but he hadn't said anything really. And it was in the return train that very day that he had, so to say, discovered Edith. He had found himself in her carriage, having strayed from that reserved for his father and mother to shepherd some late arrivals, and she had been opposite him the whole way. She was quiet—he had noticed that first; but when he did succeed in drawing her out a little, he had found a very attractive creature. It was hard to say why, but still, as he analysed her, she was frank, gay, and yet unexpectedly deep. And she, too, was pretty. He had seen her home from the station, for the first time, and discovered that his mother was just a little annoyed.
"Do you know," he said now, continuing the subject, "I can't make up my mind what I want exactly. There seems such a lot to do in England, and yet of course I'm pledged to be a foreign missionary."
"I see," she said.
"Well, what do you think?" he demanded. "It makes me burn to see the deadness and disunion among Christians at home, and yet the heathen, dying daily without Christ—how can one stay in England for a moment longer than is necessary?"
"God will surely show you what you must do," said the girl quietly.
There was a depth of sincerity in the simple words that struck him. It was the kind of thing Madeline would never have said, and would not have meant if she had. He eyed her with a sudden wish to see more of her. "Do you know I go to Cambridge on Tuesday?" he asked.
She nodded.
"It's going to cut me off from things here," he went on. "I shall have to work in the vacs., you know. And I'm tingling to get there. I'll have time to write a bit, and I expect editors will look at stuff that comes from the 'Varsity."
"I read that bit of yours in The Record," she said.
The implied praise pleased him. "Did you?" he cried. "Did you like it? I'm longing to be able to write as well as preach. I want God to have my pen as well as my tongue."