For, as he looked at it all now, he saw it as an outsider would see it, no longer from the point of view of his own personality.  He perceived a young man, of excellent abilities and prospects, sacrificing these things for an idea that fell to pieces the instant it was touched.  He touched it now with a critical finger, and it did so fall to pieces; there was, obviously, nothing in it at all.  It was an impulse of silly pride, of obstinacy, of the sort of romance that effects nothing.  There was Merefield waiting for him—­for he knew perfectly well that terms could be arranged; there was all that leisureliness and comfort and distinction in which he had been brought up and which he knew well how to use; there was Jenny; there was his dog, his horse ... there was, in fact, everything for which Merefield stood.  He saw it all now, visualized and clear in the dark; and he had exchanged all this—­well—­for this room, and the Major’s company, and back-breaking toil....  And for no reason.

So he regarded all this for a good long while; with his eyes closed, with the darkness round him, with every detail visible and insistent, seen as in the cold light of morning before colors reassert themselves and reconcile all into a reasonable whole....

“...  I must really go to sleep!” said Frank to himself, and screwed up his eyes tight.

There came, of course, a reaction presently, and he turned to his religion.  He groped for his rosary under his pillow, placed before him (according to the instructions given in the little books) the “Mystery of the Annunciation to Mary,” and began the “Our Father.” ...  Half-way through it he began all over again to think about Cambridge, and Merefield and Jack Kirkby, and the auction in his own rooms, and his last dinner-party and the design on the menu-cards, and what a fool he was; and when he became conscious of the rosary again he found that he held in his fingers the last bead but three in the fifth decade.  He had repeated four and a half decades without even the faintest semblance of attention.  He finished them hopelessly, and then savagely thrust the string of beads under his pillow again; turned over once more, rearranged his feet, wished the Major would learn how to sleep like a gentleman; and began to think about his religion in itself.

* * * * *

After all, he began to say to himself, what proof was there—­real scientific proof—­that the thing was true at all?  Certainly there was a great deal of it that was, very convincing—­there was the curious ring of assertion and confidence in it, there was its whole character, composed (like personality) of countless touches too small to be definable; there was the definite evidence adduced from history and philosophy and all the rest.  But underneath all that—­was there, after all, any human evidence in the world sufficient to establish the astounding dogmas that lay at the root?  Was it conceivable that any such evidence could be forthcoming?