Then he took up his biretta and went to the lift.

* * * * *

The moment he came into the glass-doored parlour he saw that the crisis was come, if not passed already.  Father Francis looked miserably ill, but there was a curious hardness, too, about his eyes and mouth, as he stood waiting.  He shook his head abruptly.

“I have come to say good-bye, father.  I can bear it no more.”

Percy was careful to show no emotion at all.  He made a little sign to a chair, and himself sat down too.  “It is an end of everything,” said the other again in a perfectly steady voice.  “I believe nothing.  I have believed nothing for a year now.”

“You have felt nothing, you mean,” said Percy.

“That won’t do, father,” went on the other.  “I tell you there is nothing left.  I can’t even argue now.  It is just good-bye.”

Percy had nothing to say.  He had talked to this man during a period of over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him that his faith was going.  He understood perfectly what a strain it had been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New Humanity.  External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith, except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion nothing, was as a child crawling about in the midst of some huge machinery:  it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady.  It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy’s faith told him that there was blame due.  In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance.  The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy.  And as regards Father Francis’s personal responsibility, he could not help feeling that the other had allowed ceremonial to play too great a part in his religion, and prayer too little.  In him the external had absorbed the internal.

So he did not allow his sympathy to show itself in his bright eyes.

“You think it my fault, of course,” said the other sharply.

“My dear father,” said Percy, motionless in his chair, “I know it is your fault.  Listen to me.  You say Christianity is absurd and impossible.  Now, you know, it cannot be that!  It may be untrue—­I am not speaking of that now, even though I am perfectly certain that it is absolutely true—­but it cannot be absurd so long as educated and virtuous people continue to hold it.  To say that it is absurd is simple pride; it is to dismiss all who believe in it as not merely mistaken, but unintelligent as well—–­”

“Very well, then,” interrupted the other; “then suppose I withdraw that, and simply say that I do not believe it to be true.”