Following a delay of some days, there had been a fairly heavy mail, and Peter took his letters to the little terrace by the sea outside the mess, and sat in the sun to read them.  While he was so occupied Arnold appeared with a pipe, but, seeing him engaged, went back for a novel and a deck-chair.  It was all very peaceful and still, and beyond occasional hammering from, the leisurely construction of the outer harbour wall and once or twice the siren of a signalling steamer entering the docks, there was nothing to disturb them at all.  Perhaps half an hour passed, then Peter folded up some sheets, put them in his pocket, and walked moodily to the edge of the concrete, staring down, at the lazy slushing of the tide against:  the wall below him.

He kicked a pebble discontentedly into the water, and turned to look, at Arnold.  The older man was stretched out:  in his chair smoking a pipe and regarding him.  A slow smile passed between them.

“No, hang it all,” said Peter; “there’s nothing to smile about, Arnold, I’ve pretty well got to the end of my tether.”

“Meaning what exactly?” queried the other.

“Oh, well, you know enough already to guess the rest....  Look here, Arnold, you and.  I are fairly good pals now, I’d just like to tell you exactly what I feel.”

“Sit down then, man, and get it out.  There’s a chair yonder, and you’ve got the forenoon before ye.  I’m a heretic and all that sort of thing, of course, but perhaps that’ll make it easier.  I take it it’s a kind of heretic you’re becoming yourself.”

Peter pulled up a chair and got out his own pipe.  “Arnold,” he said, “I’m too serious to joke, and I don’t know that I’m even a Christian heretic.  I don’t know what I am and where I stand.  I wish I did; I wish I even knew how much I disbelieved, for then I’d know what to do.  But it’s not that my dogmas have been attacked and weakened.  I’ve no new light on the Apostles’ Creed and no fresh doubts about it.  I could still argue for the Virgin Birth of Christ and the Trinity, and so on.  But it’s worse than that.  I feel ...”  He broke off abruptly and pulled at his pipe.  The other said nothing.  They were friends enough by now to understand each other.  In a little while the younger man found the words he wanted.

“Look here, it’s like this.  I remember once, on the East Coast, coming across a stone breakwater high and dry in a field half a mile from the sea.  There was nothing the matter with the breakwater, and it served admirably for certain purposes—­a seat, for instance, or a shady place for a picnic.  But it was no longer of any vital use in the world, for the sea had receded and left it there.  Now, that’s just what I feel.  I had a religion; I suppose it had its weaknesses and its faults; but most of it was good sound stone, and it certainly had served.  But it serves no longer, not because it’s damaged, but because the need for it has changed its nature or is no longer there.”  He trailed off into silence and stopped.