some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same
mistakes that he does."

Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and
that in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he
was rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd
whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a man
who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of
endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly
and sat down.

His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest
from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the
Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with
which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with
abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands,
and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New
England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr
spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness,
his jests serving as an outlet, not only for the irritation physical
ugliness always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his
wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her.
The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in
the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind
there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a
character which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely
forsaken. Arthur said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly
person. "He is so out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I
always have a strong inclination to rub him out and make him over
again." In that inmost chamber of his consciousness where he allowed