“Tell us about confession,” I said, and curled myself up to listen.

“Right,” agreed Monty.

“But wait,” warned Doe.  “You’re not going to get me to come to confession.  I value your good opinion too highly.”

“My dear Gazelle, don’t be absurd.  I’ll have your promise to-night.”

“You won’t!”

“I will!  Here goes.”

And Monty opened with a preliminary bombardment in which, in his shattering style, he fired at us every argument that ever has been adduced for private confession—­“the Sacrament of Penance,” as he startled us by calling it.  The Bible was poured out upon us.  The doctrine and practice of the Church came hurtling after.  Then suddenly he threw away theological weapons, and launched a specialised attack on each of us in turn, obviously suiting his words to his reading of our separate characters.  He turned on me, and said: 

“You see, Rupert.  Confession is simply the consecration of your own natural instinct—­the instinct to unburden yourself to one who waits with love and a gift of forgiveness—­the instinct to have someone in the world who knows exactly all that you are.  You realise that you are utterly lonely, as long as you are acting a part before all the world.  But your loneliness goes when you know of at least one to whom you stand revealed.”

As he said it, my whole soul seemed to answer “Yes.”

“It’s so,” he continued.  “Christianity from beginning to end is the consecration of human instincts.”

So warmed up was he to his subject that he brought out his next arguments like an exultant player leading honour after honour from a hand of trumps.  He slapped me triumphantly on the knee, and brought out his ace: 

“The Christ-idea is the consecration of the instinct to have a visible, tangible hero for a god.”

Again he slapped me on the knee, and said: 

“The Mass is the consecration of the instinct to have a place and a time and an Objective Presence, where one can touch the hem of His garment and worship.”

That was his king.  He emphasised his final argument on my knee more triumphantly than ever.

“And confession is the consecration of the instinct to unburden your soul; to know that you are not alone in your knowledge of yourself; to know that at a given moment, by a definite sacrament, your sins are blotted away, as though they had never been.”

His victorious contention, by its very impulse, carried its colours into my heart.  I yielded to his conviction that Catholic Christianity held all the honours.  But I fancy I had wanted to capitulate, before ever the attack began.

“By Jove,” I said.  “I never saw things like that before.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he snapped.

Having broken through my front, he was re-marshalling his arguments into a new formation, ready to bear down upon Doe, when that spirited youth, who alone did any counter-attacking, assumed the initiative, and assaulted Monty with the words: