Barry Pain

“ I can make people who are infinitely better than I shall ever be become a little better than they are now. I am the sinner set to work to make saints. I can help others, though I can help myself so little. ”

“ I make them believe more than I can believe. Do you think the old difficulties are dead because the agnostic novel is no longer fashionable? They are not clever, you say, these people? If they were I should do less good. I am not worthy of the work. My one consolation is that I do not make money out of it, and chat, extraordinary though it may seem in a man like myself, I do some good."
"Why this hysterical self-abasement? I hate this miserable sinner business. If you can do good here, you can do good at Thelsford. ”

“ I wouldn't discover anything for worlds. Enterprise is not in my line. All I do is to be greatly struck by the absolutely obvious—to feel this impression vividly. To-night these strangely different types, all actuated by the same motive, interest me exceedingly. There is Keble; there is your grocer; there is Lady Follace, who sends a groom on a galloping horse with a note to you whenever she has spoken harshly to her footman, to ask you what she is to do. For the matter of that, there is yourself. You're an athlete——"
"Oh, that'll do about me!" Lake interrupted. ”

“ Lake smiled good-naturedly, and said, "Do you want your head punched?"
"Certainly not. Most emphatically not."
"Then don't try to draw out for your worldly amusement the simple country parson."
"It wasn't that," said lord Ornington, shaking his head. "Ridicule is the privilege of the young—I have given up ridicule. I don't suppose I shall ever laugh at anything again—at least not at anything more than anything else," He finished his champagne and leaned back in his chair. "I spoke honestly—out of a wistful curiousness. Isn't it hot in here?" ”

“ Of course, fear may play its part with less noble natures, and the love of the good because it is good with the more noble, but with most of us the motive is different. I preached to-night about a kind of peace that does not admit of understanding and definition. Everyone who sees that so many things are all wrong, and longs for them to come right and settle down in some way that he is not clever enough to work out for himself, is a potential Christian. ”

“ Go to bed, and let me forget how savage I feel with you. Good-night, old man. Here, wait. Why don't you go for a missionary or do slumming. You could give up even more, die sooner, get all the little treats that appeal to you morbid martyrs."
"I'm not morbid, I'm not a martyr, and I'm not going to be a missionary. There are always enough volunteers for the heroic, and too few for the humdrum. Well——"
He stopped. Carriage-wheels rattled on the gravel. Lady Follace's coachman reined in the roans sharply. Lake came forward and took a note. He glanced through it, and turned to Lord Ornington. ”

“ You're an athlete and a scholar. You have by nature," he added with a flickering smile, "some warm sympathies with the world and the flesh—or had at any rate in the days when we were at Cambridge together. ”

“ Lady Follace has been taken seriously ill, and wants me."
Lord Ornington shrugged his shoulders. In another minute Lake was driven away in the carriage,
"Damn the man!" said Lord Ornington to himself as he paced up and down the verandah. "Who else would have—— 'Almost thou persuadest me ...' Damn him!"
A servant came on to the verandah to remove the coffee apparatus. "There is," said Lord Ornington, "a yellow-covered French book on the table under the plane-tree there. Kindly fetch it, and let me have a lamp here. Mr. Lake may be late to-night. I will wait up for him." ”