“There,” he said, “that’s very good writing, you know—­full of freshness—­but you are not meant to admire the poor soul:  that’s not the way to go on pilgrimage!  There is something wrong with a man’s religion, if it leaves him in that state.  I don’t mean that to be happy is always a sign of grace—­it often is simply a lack of sympathy and imagination; but to be as good as Mr. Feeblemind, and at the same time as unhappy, is a clear sign that something is wrong.  He is like a dog that will try to get through a narrow gap with a stick in his mouth—­he can’t make out why he can’t do his duty and bring the stick—­it catches on both sides, and won’t let him through.  He knows it is his business to bring the thing back at once, but he is prevented in some mysterious way.  It doesn’t occur to him to put the stick down, get through himself, and then pull it through by the end.  That is why our duty is often so hard, because we think we ought to do it simply and directly, when it really wants a little adjusting—­we regard the momentary precept, not the ultimate principle.”

“But what is to tell us where to draw the line,” said Vincent, “and when to disregard the precept?”

“Ah,” said Father Payne, “that’s my great discovery, which no one else will ever recognise—­that is where the sense of beauty comes in!”

“I don’t see that the sense of beauty has anything to do with morality,” said Vincent.

“Ah, but that is because you are at heart a Puritan,” said Father Payne; “and the mistake of all Puritans is to disregard the sense of beauty—­all the really great saints have felt about morality as an artist feels about beauty.  They don’t do good things because they are told to do them, but because they feel them to be beautiful, splendid, attractive; and they avoid having anything to do with evil things, because such things are ugly and repellent.”

“But when you have to do a thoroughly disagreeable thing,” said Vincent, “there often isn’t anything beautiful about it either way.  I’ll give you a small instance.  Some months ago I had been engaged for a fortnight to go to a thoroughly dull dinner-party with some dreary relations of mine, and a man asked me to come and dine at his club and meet George Meredith, whom I would have given simply anything to meet.  Of course I couldn’t do it—­I had to go on with the other thing.  I had to do what I hated, without the smallest hope of being anything but fearfully bored:  and I had to give up doing what would have interested me more than anything in the world.  Of course, that is only a small instance, but it will suffice.”

“It all depends on how you behaved at your dinner-party when you got there,” said Father Payne, smiling; “were you sulky and cross, or were you civil and decent?”

“I don’t know,” said Vincent; “I expect I was pretty much as usual.  After all, it wasn’t their fault!”