"Well, what do you think?" he demanded. "It makes me burn to see the deadness and disunion among Christians at home, and yet the heathen, dying daily without Christ--how can one stay in England for a moment longer than is necessary?"
"God will surely show you what you must do," said the girl quietly.
There was a depth of sincerity in the simple words that struck him. It was the kind of thing Madeline would never have said, and would not have meant if she had. He eyed her with a sudden wish to see more of her. "Do you know I go to Cambridge on Tuesday?" he asked.
"It's going to cut me off from things here," he went on. "I shall have to work in the vacs., you know. And I'm tingling to get there. I'll have time to write a bit, and I expect editors will look at stuff that comes from the 'Varsity."
"I read that bit of yours in _The Record_," she said.
The implied praise pleased him. "Did you?" he cried. "Did you like it? I'm longing to be able to write as well as preach. I want God to have my pen as well as my tongue."
"Oh you are lucky!" she exclaimed involuntarily.
He was extraordinarily touched by her humility. He wanted to take her arm, but he did not like to do so. They turned another corner, and were in her street.
"Don't say that," he said. "You've yourself--give that. No one can give more."
"I'm not sure," she said, with a nervous catch in her voice, "that I can give that."
She did not reply directly. "I wonder what you will be like after a term at Cambridge," she said, inconsequently.
The girl made little stabs with her umbrella at the pavement. "It will," she said. "I wonder if you'll come back the least bit the same. Oh, I know! You'll have new friends and new interests, and you'll think us all just a little cheap. You'll go away in the holidays, abroad very likely, and even our country won't seem the same to you."
Paul was surprised at her vehemence, and he came to a sudden resolution. "Do you know," he said, "I'm going to take a last bike ride to-morrow round Hursley Woods and Allington, just to say good-bye. I meant to go alone, but do you think you could come too? I'd love it. We'd be able to talk, up there in the heather. Will you?"
The girl slowed down still more; they were very near her home. She was so glad that he had asked her that she could hardly speak. "Yes," she said; and then, with a burst of confidence: "Do you think we ought to?"