“Oh, just a Christian gentleman,” she answered. “You will love him when you know him.” “Yes,” she answered. “Will you be coming alone?”!

There came another opening of the door. A little hairy man entered. He wore spectacles and was dressed in black. He carried a paper parcel which he laid upon the table. He looked a little doubtful at Joan. Mary introduced them. His name was Julius Simson. He shook hands as if under protest. “His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?”

A fear was creeping over her. “Why have you come back?” she asked. She glanced round and lowered her voice. “They tell me,” she said, “that you’re a B.A.” “Oh, why don’t you chuck it,” advised Miss Ensor, “give the Bourgeois a rest.”