social life of Europe. In the sad inactivity which followed, I set to work
to look through my old papers, for the sake of distraction and employment,
and found much material almost ready for use, careful notes of
conversations, personal reminiscences, jottings of characteristic touches,
which seemed as if they could be easily shaped. Moreover, the past suddenly
revived, and became eloquent and vivid. I found in the beautiful memories
of those glowing days that I spent with Father Payne--it was only three
years--some consolation and encouragement in my distress.

This little volume is the result. I am well aware that the busy years which
have intervened have taken the edge off some of my recollections, while the
lapse of time has possibly touched others with a sunset glow. That can
hardly be avoided, and I am not sure that I wish to avoid it.

I am not here concerned with either criticising or endorsing Father Payne's
views. I see both inconsistencies and fallacies in them. I even detect
prejudices and misinterpretations of which I was not conscious at the time.
I have no wish to idealise my subject unduly, but it is clear to me, and I
hope I have made it clear to others, that Father Payne was a man who had a
very definite theory of life and faith, and who at all events lived
sincerely and even passionately in the light of his beliefs. Moreover, when
he came to put them to the supreme test, the test of death, they did not
desert or betray him: he passed on his way rejoicing.

He used, I remember, to warn us against attempting too close an analysis of
character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man, the intuitive
instinct which impelled him, his _attack_ upon experience, was a thing
almost independent both of his circumstances and of his reason. He used to
take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and say that a box full of
thread and a loom made up a very small part of the process. It was the