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cese--and some from other counties. It made me think of what a French Catholic Modernist said to me two years ago--'Pius X may write encyclicals as he pleases--I could show him whole dioceses in France that are practically Modernist, where the Seminaries are Modernist, and two thirds of the clergy. The Bishop knows it quite well, and is helpless. Over the border perhaps you get an Ultramontane diocese, and an Ultramontane bishop. But the process goes on. Life and time are for us!'" He paused and laughed. "Ah, of course I don't pretend things are so here--yet. Our reforms in England--in Church and State--broaden slowly down. In France, reform, when it moves at all, tends to be catastrophic. But in the Markborough diocese alone we have won over perhaps a fifth of the clergy, and the dioceses all round are moving. As to the rapidity of the movement in the last few months it has been nothing short of amazing!"
"And what is the end to be? Not only--oh! Not only--to destroy!" said Mary. The soft intensity of the voice, the beauty of the look, touched him strangely.
He smiled, and there was a silence for a minute, as they wandered downward through a purple stretch of heather to a little stream, sun-smitten, that lay across their path. Once or twice she looked at him timidly, afraid lest she might have wounded him.
But at last he said:
"Shall I answer you in the words of a beloved poet?
"'What though there still need effort, strife? Though much be still unwon? Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life! Death's frozen hour is done!
"'The world's great order dawns in sheen After long darkness rude, Divinelier imaged, clearer seen, With happier zeal pursued.
"'What still of strength is left, employ, This end to help attain-- One common wave of thought and joy Lifting mankind again!'
"There"--his voice was low and rapid--"there is the goal! a new _happiness_: to be reached through a new comradeship--a freer and yet intenser fellow