idea ever occur to you that he was himself a conscious hypocrite, what he called the jews of his time, a whited sepulchre? Or, to put it more plainly, that he was a blackguard?

----That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. But I am curious to know are you trying to make a convert of me or a pervert of yourself?

He turned towards his friend's face and saw there a raw smile which some force of will strove to make finely significant.

Cranly asked suddenly in a plain sensible tone:

----Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?

----Somewhat, Stephen said.

----And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone, if you feel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son of God?

----I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of God than a son of Mary.

----And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host too may be the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And because you fear that it may be?

----Yes, Stephen said quietly. I feel that and I also fear it.

----I see, Cranly said.

Stpehn, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once by saying:

----I fear many things: dogs, horses, firearms, the sea, thunderstorms, machinery, the country roads at night.

----But why do you fear a bit of bread?

----I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind those things I say fear.

----Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the