under the table mentioned so eloquently in Scripture—­ sustenance unregarded and unvalued, no doubt, by yourself—­cast out inevitably and naturally as light from the sun!  It is not only the actual dicta,” said the Vicar, “though these alone are deeply treasured; it’s the method of thought, the reserve, the refinement, which I find insensibly affecting my own mental processes.  Before I was a mere collector of details.  Now I find myself saying, ’What is the aim of all this?  What is the synthesis?  Where does it come in?  Where does it tend to?’ I have not as yet found any very definite answer to these self-questionings, but the new spirit, the synthetic spirit, is there; and I find myself too concentrating my expression; I have become conscious in your presence of a certain diffuseness of talk—­I used, I think, to indulge much in synonyms and parallel clauses—­a characteristic, I have seen it said, of our immortal Shakespeare himself—­but I have found myself lately considering the aim, the effect, the form of my utterances, and have practised—­mainly in my sermons—­a certain economy of language, which I hope has been perceptible to other minds besides my own.”

“I always think your sermons very good,” said Howard, quite sincerely; “they seem to me arrows deliberately aimed at a definite target—­they have the grace of congruity, as the articles say.”

“You are very good,” said the Vicar.  “I am really overwhelmed; but I must admit that your presence—­the mere chance of your presence—­ has made me exercise an unwonted caution, and indeed introduce now and then an idea which is perhaps rather above the comprehension of my flock!”

“But may I go back for one moment?” said Howard.  “You will forgive my asking this—­but what you said just now about Maud interested me very much, and of course pleased me enormously.  I would do anything I could to make her happy in any way—­I wish you would tell me how and in what you think her more content.  I want to learn all I can about her earlier days—­you must remember that all that is unknown to me.  Won’t you exercise your powers of analysis for my benefit?”

“You are very kind,” said the Vicar in high delight; “let me see, let me see!  Well, dear Maud as a girl had always a very high and anxious sense of responsibility and duty.  She conceived of herself—­ perhaps owing to some chance expressions of my own—­as bound as far as possible to fill the place of her dear mother—­a gap, of course, that it was impossible to fill,—­my own pursuits are, you will realise, mere distractions, or, to be frank, were originally so designed, to combat my sense of loss.  But I am personally not a man who makes a morbid demand for sympathy—­I have little use for sympathy.  I face my troubles alone; I suffer alone,” said the Vicar with an incredible relish.  “And then Jack is an independent boy, and has no taste for being dominated.  So that I fear that dear Maud’s most touching efforts hardly fell on very responsive soil.