In Hursley Woods that vacation, Paul explained it all to Edith. They were seated side by side on a fallen log, and all around them the fresh blue of the wild hyacinths was unstained as Paradise. They lit the dull day with a radiance of their own. Brown and green and grey blent about them and faded into distance, and he held her hand. The two had just kissed with a solemn virginal innocence. They were glad, but not gay. Francis of Assisi would have wondered at them, had he been there. As it was one of his brethren, a big blackbird with a bright enquiring eye, emphatically did so. It probably struck him that these restrained humans were out of place in such a vivid, tingling, riotous life as that of a wood in spring. He hopped off to look for a worm.
Paul renewed the conversation that the kissing had interrupted. "You see, Edith, dear," he said, "it's so illogical to believe one thing and act another. What are the realities of life? God, and a lost world, and Christ our Saviour. What does anything matter beside them? Both Dick and I feel that everything—everything—ought to be surrendered to Him. Even things good in themselves must go down before the awful necessity of preaching the Gospel. Mind you, I don't speak of learning quite as I did. I see, for example, that if I get a first in my History, it will be of use in the Church. But all the rest—do you see?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes, in a way," she said.
"Look here"—he jumped up eagerly—"I'll give you an illustration. It's a silly one, in a way, but it's all the better for that. It's the commonplace things people won't see. In my rooms, last term, Donaldson and Strether and I—oh, and a man called Hannam—were discussing dress. Donaldson was saying that there was no reason why a Christian shouldn't wear decent socks—clocked, gay things like his own. There was nothing wrong in them, he said. I agreed, but I couldn't help it; I said: 'Would Christ have worn them? Would He have spent an extra shilling on a yellow stripe in His socks when that shilling would send a Testament to China?' Would He? What do you think?"
"He would not," she said.
"Exactly." In his triumph, Paul sobered and sat down. "There's no escape," he said.
Edith leant forward and prodded the soft earth with a stick. "Then you'd wear the oldest clothes and live on just anything and have no home and go about preaching," she said.
"Exactly," said Paul again.
"But what would happen to the world if everyone did that?" queried Edith.
"That is not our concern," said Paul gravely. "I do not know and I do not care. But this I do know, if Christians started in to do that, they'd—they'd—well, they'd turn the world upside down. Which is exactly what the world said Paul and Barnabas were doing."