in anything he ever did that would strike him as puny. His life was magnificent and important, filled to bursting point with a splendid usefulness and with a tendency to fill the lives of every one who came within his reach to their several bursting points, too. But he, of course, was a prince of the Church. Still, he had gone through the Church's stages, beginning humbly; yet she doubted whether at any moment of his career he had looked at it and thought it puny. And was it not indeed the highest career of all? However breathless and hurried it made one's female relations in its upper reaches, and drudging in its lower, the very highest?

But though she was curdled she was interested.

"It might not be amiss," continued the pastor, looking out of the window at some well-farmed land they were passing, "if it were not for the Sundays."

Again she was curdled.

"But—"

"They spoil it."

She was silent; and the silence of the two ladies appeared to acquire a frost.

"It is the fatal habit of Sundays," he went on, following the disappearing land with his eyes, "to recur."

He paused, as if waiting for her to agree.

She had to, because it was a truth one could not get away from. "Yes," she said, reluctantly. "Of course. It's their nature." Then a wave of memories suddenly broke over her, and she added warmly "Oh don't they!"

The frost of the ladies seemed to settle down. It grew heavy.

"They interrupt one's work," he said.

"But they are your work," she said, puzzled.

"No."

She stared. "But," she began, "a pastor—"

"A pastor is also a man."

"Yes," said Ingeborg, "but—"

"You have no doubt observed that he is, invariably, also a man."

"Yes," said Ingeborg, "but—"

"And a man of intelligence—I am a man of intelligence—cannot fill up his life with the meagre materials offered by the practice of the tenets of the Lutheran Church."

"Oh—the Lutheran Church," said Ingeborg, catching at a straw.

"Any church."

She was silent. She felt how immensely her father would not have liked it. She felt it was wicked to sit there and listen. She also felt, strange and dreadful to observe, refreshed.

"Then," she began, knitting her brows, for really this at its best was bad taste, and bad taste, she had always been taught, was the very worst—oh, but how nice it was, a little bit of it, after the swamps of good taste one waded about in in cathedral cities! She knitted her brows, aghast at her thoughts. "Then what," she asked, "do you fill your life up with?"

"Manure," said the German gentleman.

The ladies leapt in their places.

"Ma—" began Ingeborg; then stopped.

"I am engaged in endeavouring to teach the peasants of my parish how best to farm their poor pieces of land."

"Oh, really," said Ingeborg, politely.

"I do it by example. They do not attend to words. I have bought a few acres and experiment before their eyes. Our soil is the worst in Germany. It is inconceivably thankless. And the peasants resemble it."

"Oh, really," said Ingeborg.

"The result of the combination is poverty."

"So then, I suppose," said Ingeborg, with memories of the Bishop's methods, "you preach patience."

"Patience! I preach manure."

Again at the dreadful word the ladies leapt.

"It is," he said solemnly, his eyes glistening with enthusiasm, "the foundation of a nation's greatness."

"I hadn't thought of it like that," said Ingeborg, seeing that he waited.

"But on what then does a State depend in the last resort?"

She was afraid to say, for there seemed to be so many possible answers.

"Naturally on its agriculture," said the pastor, with the slight irritation of one obliged to linger over the obvious.

"Of course," said the pliable Ingeborg, trained in acquiescence.

"And on what does agriculture depend in the last resort?"

Brilliantly she hazarded "Manure."

For the third time the ladies leapt, and the one next to her drew away her dress.

He showed his appreciation of her intelligence by nodding slowly.

"A nation must be fed," he said, "and empty fields will feed no one."

"Of course not," said Ingeborg.

"So that it is the chief element in all progress; for the root of progress flourishes only in a filled stomach."

The ladies began to fan themselves violently, nervously, one with The Daily Mirror the other with Answers.

"Of course," said Ingeborg.

"First," said the German gentleman, "you fill your stomach—"

The lady next to Ingeborg made a sudden lunge across her at the strap.

"Excuse me, but do you mind putting that window down?" she said in a sort of burst.

The German gentleman, stemmed in his speech, used the interval while Ingeborg opened the window in buttoning up his overcoat again with care and patience and readjusting his muffler.

When he had attended to these things he resumed his enthusiasm; he seemed to switch it on again.

"The infinite combinations of it!" he exclaimed. "Its infinite varieties! Kali, Kainit, Chilisaltpetre, Superphosphates"—he rolled out the words as though they were the verse of a psalm. "When I shut the door on myself in the little laboratory I have constructed I shut in with me all life, all science, every possibility. I analyse, I synthesize, I separate, reduce, combine. I touch the stars. I stir the depths. The daily world is forgotten. I forget, indeed, everything, except my research. And invariably at the most profound, the most exalted moments some one knocks and tells me it is Sunday again, and will I come out and preach."

He looked at her indignantly, demanding sympathy. "Preach!" he repeated.

"Then why," she asked, with the courage of curiosity, "are you a pastor?"

"Because my father made me one."

"But why are you still one?"

"Because a man must live."

"He oughtn't to want to," said Ingeborg with a faint flush, for she had been carefully trained to shyness when it came to pronouncing opinions—the Bishop called it being womanly—"he oughtn't to want to at the cost of his convictions."

"Nevertheless," said the pastor, "he does."

"Yes," said Ingeborg, obliged to admit it; even at Redchester cases were not unknown. "He does," she said, nodding. "Of course he does." And unable not to be at least as honest as the pastor she added: "And so does a woman."

"Naturally," said the pastor.

She looked at him a moment, and then said impulsively, pulling herself a little forward towards him by the window strap—

"This woman does. She's doing it now."

The two ladies exchanged glances and fluttered their fans faster.

"Which woman?" inquired the pastor, whose mastery of English, though ripe, was not nimble.

"This one," said Ingeborg, pointing at herself. "Me. I'm living at this very moment—I'm whirling along in this train—I'm running away for this holiday entirely at the cost of my convictions."

CHAPTER III

After this it was not to be expected that Dent's Tour should look favourably on either Ingeborg or the German gentleman. Running away? And something happened at Dover that clinched it in its coldness.

The train had slowed down, and the excursionists had become busy and were all standing up expectant and swaying with their bags and umbrellas ready in their hands, except Ingeborg and the pastor. The train stopped, and still the two at the door did not move. They were so much interested in what they were saying that they went on sitting