"But your presentation of it was a distinct tour de force," said Manning.
Paul took his courage in both hands. "You praise the presentation, not the thing," he said. "What is the Gospel to you, Manning?"
The other smiled genially. "Ah well," he said, "if I invite an evangelist to coffee, I suppose I must expect to be asked if I am saved."
"Don't!" cried Paul. "You laugh at it. I cannot do that."
"You're wrong there," replied the other quickly. "I do not laugh at it. A man is a fool who does that. It is impossible to deny that Christianity was, and probably is, a great dynamic in the world's affairs. You cannot dismiss St. Paul, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, or even Luther and Wesley or Moody, with a gesture. But I confess that to-night's affair interested me most as an observer of men. You interest me more than your religion. But here we are. Let's talk over coffee."
Paul, in his arm-chair by the fireplace, glanced round the now familiar room with an air of hostility of which his subconscious more than his conscious mind was aware. But he had had tea that day with Hartley, and he definitely compared his friend's room at Jesus with this, for the first time. He had yet to discover that he was sensitive to an "atmosphere," but he was already well on the road to that discovery. Hartley's room was big and rather bare. He was athletic, and the wall-space was almost wholly given up to a number of oars, and a dozen or so plainly-framed groups with a cricket cap hanging from the corner of one. The exceptions were two other photographs, one of the service on the sands at Eastbourne (in which Paul had discovered Madeline) and one of the Cambridge University Missionary Campaigners in some Midland town. The mantelshelf was overcrowded with photographs of men, snapshots of children, and the cards of a variety of chiefly religious societies and activities among which a Bump Supper menu seemed out of place. The electric lights were naked; the window-curtains commonplace; the tea had been homely. The room focussed activities. It had made Paul feel instinctively "keen," as they said at the Christian Union.
Manning, kneeling before the fire, was carefully pouring boiling water into a Turkish coffee-pot of burnished copper. Delicate china coffee-cups stood by a silver cigarette-box on an Indian lacquered table. A diffused light filtered through silken lamp-shades, and two wall-sconces of candles lit the pictures with a faint radiance. The corners and distances of the room were heavy with shadows. Bronze chrysanthemums stood in a tall vase on an otherwise bare overmantel. The chairs the big footstools, the lounge, the carpet—all were soft, rich, heavy. The firelight glinted on the tooled leather bindings of books in a case opposite him. The room made him feel comfortable and introspective. Parker's Piece seemed to belong to a different world.
He pulled himself together, and deliberately continued the conversation. "But it is Christ Who matters, Manning," he said with real bravery.
The other replaced the kettle and set the coffee-pot on the table. He selected a cigarette and lit it over the lamp. Then he settled himself comfortably on the lounge. "Matters?" he queried. "Your technicalities are new to me, Kestern."
But Paul was not going to shirk issues. "Yes," he said, "matters to your soul, for life or death."