(2)


Every one knows that expedient of the sleepless, the counting of sheep.

You lie quite still, you breathe regularly, you imagine sheep jumping
over a gate, one after another, you count them quietly and slowly until
you count yourself off through a fading string of phantom numbers to
number Nod....

But sheep, alas! suggest an episcopal crook.

And presently a black sheep had got into the succession and was
struggling violently with the crook about its leg, a hawk-nosed black
sheep full of reproof, with disordered hair and a pointing finger. A
young man with a most disagreeable voice.

At which the other sheep took heart and, deserting the numbered
succession, came and sat about the fire in a big drawing-room and argued
also. In particular there was Lady Sunderbund, a pretty fragile tall
woman in the corner, richly jewelled, who sat with her pretty eyes
watching and her lips compressed. What had she thought of it? She had
said very little.

It is an unusual thing for a mixed gathering of this sort to argue about
the Trinity. Simply because a tired bishop had fallen into their party.
It was not fair to him to pretend that the atmosphere was a liberal and
inquiring one, when the young man who had sat still and dormant by the
table was in reality a keen and bitter Irish Roman Catholic. Then the
question, a question-begging question, was put quite suddenly, without