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care nothing about the Trinity, any way."
    "Oh, damn the Trinity."
    He burst with laughter. "Exactly, exactly. We will now pass on to my next point."
    "I don't see the use, and I've a rotten head any way—I mean a headache. Nothing's gained by—all this. No doubt I can't prove the thing—I mean the arrangement of Three Gods in One and One in Three. But it means a lot to millions of people, whatever you may say, and we aren't going to give it up. We feel about it very deeply. God is good. That is the main point. Why go off on a side track?"
    "Why feel so deeply about a side track?"
    "What?"
    Durham tidied up his remarks for him.
    "Well, the whole show all hangs together."
    "So that if the Trinity went wrong it would invalidate the whole show?"
    "I don't see that. Not at all."
    He was doing badly, but his head really did ache, and when he wiped the sweat off it reformed.
    "No doubt I can't explain well, as I care for nothing but rug-ger."
    Durham came and sat humorously on the edge of his chair.
    "Look out—you've gone into the coffee now."
    "Blast—so I have."
    While he cleaned himself, Maurice unsported and looked out into the court. It seemed years since he had left it. He felt disinclined to be longer alone with Durham and called to some men to join them. A coffee of the usual type ensued, but when they left Maurice felt equally disinclined to leave with them. He flourished the Trinity again. "It's a mystery," he argued.
    "It isn't a mystery to me. But I honour anyone to whom it really is."
    Maurice felt uncomfortable and looked at his own thick brown hands. Was the Trinity really a mystery to him? Except at his confirmation had he given the institution five minutes'
    thought? The arrival of the other men had cleared his head, and, no longer emotional, he glanced at his mind. It appeared like his hands—serviceable, no doubt, and healthy, and capable of development. But it lacked refinement, it had never touched mysteries, nor a good deal else. It was thick and brown.
    "My position's this," he announced after a pause. "I don't believe in the Trinity, I give in there, but on the other hand I was wrong when I said everything hangs together. It doesn't, and because I don't believe in the Trinity it doesn't mean I am not a Christian."
    "What do you believe in?" said Durham, unchecked.
    "The—the essentials."
    "As?"
    In a low voice Maurice said, "The Redemption." He had never spoken the words out of church before and thrilled with emotion. But he did not believe in them any more than in the Trinity, and knew that Durham would detect this. The Redemption was the highest card in the suit, but that suit wasn't trumps, and his friend could capture it with some miserable two.
    All that Durham said at the time was, "Dante did believe in the Trinity," and going to the shelf found the concluding passage of the Paradiso. He read to Maurice about the three rainbow circles that intersect, and between their junctions is enshadowed a human face. Poetry bored Maurice, but towards the close he cried, "Whose face was it?"
    "God's, don't you see?"
    "But isn't that poem supposed to be a dream?"
    Hall was a muddle-headed fellow, and Durham did not try to make sense of this, nor knew that Maurice was thinking of a dream of his own at school, and of the voice that had said, "That is your friend."
    "Dante would have called it an awakening, not a dream."
    "Then you think that sort of stuff's all right?"
    "Belief's always right," replied Durham, putting back the book. "It's all right and it's also unmistakable. Every man has somewhere about him some belief for which he'd die. Only isn't it improbable that your parents and guardians told it to you? If there is one won't it be part of your own flesh and spirit? Show me that. Don't go hawking out tags like 'The Redemption' or 'The Trinity'."
    "I've given up the Trinity."
    "The Redemption, then."
    "You're beastly hard," said Maurice. "I always knew I was stupid, it's no news. The Risley set are more