Thus the priests of the Order were not called "Fathers" or "Brethren,"

which implied a false anthropomorphic relationship to a supreme parent "God"; they were simply "Incandescents":--Incandescent Bernard, Incandescent Margaret, Incandescent Mansel, and so on. Again, in allowing women to officiate at the altar of the Supreme Incandescence, the doctrine of the Inner Light rose superior to Christianity. "Owing to Judaic tradition and influence," as his Incandescence Albernspiel had truly pointed out, "the Christian Church had never enjoyed the eminent advantage of women's ministration. Even the Greeks had been wiser than this. And thus much of an essential character in all true religion had always been absent from Christianity, owing to this proscription of feminine influence." (_The Doctrine of the Inner Light_, Vol. II., p.

1303.)

There was only one Temple in England, at which all the faithful met once a year, and that was at Liverpool. It was hoped that other churches would be built sooner or later in other big centres, but meanwhile,--that is to say, pending the collecting of the necessary building fund,--all the faithful outside Liverpool were recommended to meet once a month at each other's houses, where one of the Incandescents would hold a service.

The Incandescent for London was a pale and feverish looking little man, Gerald Tribe by name, with false teeth and large, bony red hands, who lived as a sort of non-paying guest at the house of Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne's elder sister, at Hampstead. It was a perfectly orderly arrangement, because, apart from the fact that he had his young wife with him, he was in any case such a learned and pure-minded young man, that, as Miss Mallowcoid declared, even if he had not been married, she would have regarded it as a privilege to live under the same roof with him. She admitted, of course, that his wife was so far beneath him as to present an almost insufferable objection to the arrangement; but Miss Mallowcoid regarded this creature as the trial and chastisement sent by the supreme Incandescence, to bring both her own and Gerald Tribe's inner light to ever greater prodigies of brilliance and power.

Miss Mallowcoid, who had been responsible for her sister, Mrs.

Delarayne's conversion to the Inner Light, was expected that afternoon, as were also Sir Joseph Bullion, and all the London faithful. Lord Henry had also reluctantly agreed to attend this one meeting after months of persuasion from Mrs. Delarayne.

If Mrs. Delarayne had been asked why she had joined the cult of the Inner Light, she would have probably replied that it was a simple doctrine. Light was the beginning, Light would be the end. Life on earth was simply the struggle of Light against Darkness. When you died, you became one with the Eternal Incandescence. Age, old age,--and this was the part that chiefly attracted Mrs. Delarayne,--_was simply the fatigue incurred by battling with darkness_. When Light prevailed, as it would in the other world, Age would pass away, _and everybody would remain eternally youthful_.

Thus, far from feeling selfish or unselfish, Mrs. Delarayne was conscious only of a sensation of supreme elation, as she watched her daughters leave the house on that afternoon in July. She was even able to contemplate their unusual beauty, which would have made them a credit to any family, with unmixed feelings of pride as they walked down the square, and she smiled as she noticed the eagerness with which Leonetta strode ahead, just about half a pace in front of her sister. When she turned away from the window, therefore, and once again surveyed the large stately dining-room, with its row upon row of chairs all ready for the meeting, she was conscious only of feeling supremely happy and above all secure.

Lord Henry was to come at last. For months, in fact ever since her first initiation into the Order, she had implored him to attend a meeting, and now that her will had prevailed she felt confident that once he saw with his own eyes the large number of distinguished people gathered that day under her roof--all followers and devotees of the Inner Light,--he would be forced to acknowledge that there was a good deal in it.

Among the first arrivals was Sir Lionel Borridge, the inventor of the most up-to-date calculating machine, and a mathematician of renown. He had a conical brow like a beautifully polished knee, and very sad eyes which seemed to proclaim to the world that the study of mathematics was, on the whole, a most harrowing occupation. With him came his aged wife and spinster daughter. Both appeared to be over fifty, and, like the head of their household, also deeply depressed by mathematics. These three, looking so learned, looking so miserable with learning, were surely the best evidence that could be advanced in support of the truth of the Inner Light; for they were all convinced adherents of the Order.

Sir Joseph arrived punctually at three, the hour appointed for the meeting. With him came Malster, and one of the junior secretaries of Bullion Ltd., a certain Guy Tyrrell. Lord Henry and St. Maur came a minute after time, and were followed by a phalanx of ladies of uncertain age, with their Poms, their Pekinese, their Yorkshire and their toy terriers.

Mrs. Delarayne's dining-room was filling rapidly. A buzz of conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet, began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned in tense expectation of celebrities.

The philocanine Palmer was entrusted with the care of the legion of lap dogs out in the garden,--for the religious meeting could not admit even the most docile pet animal; and the sound of their spiteful yappings could be heard through the open windows at the back of the room.

"You know, my dear," said Lady Muriel Bellington, who had brought her Mexican hairless, "of course he is very, very naughty. And it's very tiresome. But they are so minute, one couldn't beat them. It would be really too too!"

Lady fflote, already purple with the heat, went almost black at the suggestion of beating the Mexican hairless.

"Beat them!" she ejaculated. "Oh that would be very wrong. Oh no, you couldn't bully them. Better far let them tyrannise over you. I should never forgive myself."

In another part of the room Sir Lionel Borridge was leaning across Mrs.

Gerald Tribe, the delicate and emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald Tribe, to address a word to Miss Mallowcoid.

"I think it possible, you know," he said very gravely, and looking the image of the most unconquerable woe, "that I may be able to give our minister certain mathematical facts, which I feel convinced are all in support of the doctrine of the Inner Light. I was working at them with my daughter last night,--the results are simply astounding--astounding, that's the only word."

Miss Mallowcoid ejaculated, "Really! Really!" in a hushed, awed voice, and then quickly proceeded to communicate the thrilling intelligence to her right hand neighbour, who marvelled as reverently and as inaudibly as she had done.

Sir Joseph, feeling a little bewildered, was asking Guy Tyrrell a string of questions which this young man was quite unqualified to answer, and both looked and felt extremely uncomfortable.

Lord Henry, who was seated in the second row from the front, between Denis Malster and St. Maur, glanced round at the crowd behind him, and frowned darkly.

"I think, you know, Lord Henry," said Denis Malster, noticing the young nobleman's expression of angry scorn, "you do not allow sufficiently for the fact that all of us have a subconscious inkling of the supernatural behind phenomena, and these attempts on the part of the followers of the Inner Light, of the Theosophists, or the Spiritualists, to realise the nature of this supernatural basis to the material and visible world, are all proofs of this subconscious inkling."

"I don't think," Lord Henry replied, "that you are sufficiently inclined to allow for the fundamental fact, that mankind is very, very slow in dropping an old habit. We are now, thank goodness, witnessing the slow death agony of Christianity. These people here are among those who plume themselves on having abandoned Christian dogma. But deep down in their natures, there is not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,--the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational worship. And while they are dropping away from the old Church in all directions, they simultaneously, from sheer habit, create new-fangled creeds very much more absurd than anything the Church ever taught, and not nearly so beautiful."

At this moment a hush suddenly fell upon the whole company, and Mrs.

Delarayne, who by virtue of her role as hostess, was officiating as assistant to the Incandescent Gerald that afternoon, entered the room by a small door at the back, followed by the minister.

Everyone stood up, and Lord Henry noticed that the venerable bald head of Sir Lionel Borridge was bowed in humble reverence.

The service lasted about three quarters of an hour; even Sir Joseph Bullion, who, as the latest of the elect, was the new broom of the afternoon, was seen to gape once during the course of it; and when it was over and a sort of blessing had been pronounced by the minister, the whole company filed out of the dining-room into the library for refreshment and also for the discussion of the meeting.

Everyone seemed intent upon reaching Mrs. Delarayne, and among those who struggled most to achieve this end was Sir Joseph Bullion.

Congratulations were being pronounced on all sides. "How well she had read the Articles of Faith!" "How clearly she had announced the hymns!"

"How cool and collected she was, and yet how reverent!"

Gradually the throng pressed less thickly about her, and Sir Joseph reached his idol.

"Wonderful, Edith,--wonderful!" he whispered. "And what a beautiful impressive service!"

Mrs. Delarayne grasped his hand, and even nodded, but her eyes were busy elsewhere. She was watching the movements of Lord Henry, who had not yet spoken to her, and who, apparently in animated conversation with Sir Lionel Borridge, had hitherto held himself aloof.

"You wouldn't remember, of course," Sir Joseph pursued, "the arrival of Baroness Puckha Bilj in London in the late eighties, with her doctrine of 'Self-Exteriorisation.' The Inner Light reminds me somewhat of that.

We were her bankers. She was most successful."

"Your husband surpassed himself, Mrs. Tribe," said Denis Malster to the emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald. Denis felt extremely superior behind his solid Anglican Protestant entrenchments, and thought that he could afford to be generous and even patronising to the members of a struggling creed.

"Of course, Baroness Puckha Bilj had not your advantages," continued the undaunted Sir Joseph. "She was already advanced in years when she left Hungary."

"Have some cake?" said Mrs. Delarayne.

"I admit," Lord Henry was saying, "that a new religion is perhaps the most urgent need of modern times; but then this Age is scarcely great enough to make it."

"Come, come!" exclaimed Sir Lionel gruffly, his melancholy eyes closing heavily as he spoke, "you are a little hard surely. Is not this your first attendance here? I don't seem to remember having seen you amongst us before."

Lord Henry apologised and turned away. He had noticed his hostess's eye upon him, and he hastened towards her.

"Sir Lionel's conversation seems to have been singularly engrossing,"

remarked Mrs. Delarayne as he approached.

"It always amazes me," declared the young nobleman with laughter in his eyes, "how the men of the so-called 'exact sciences' become involved in our new emergency substitutes for a great Faith."

Mrs. Delarayne purred with a slightly treble note of dissent.

"Why not?" Sir Joseph demanded.

"I suppose it is the refuge of the mind that deals only with precise and exact terms and rules, to plunge into the opposite extreme,--into blue mistiness for instance. Or is it perhaps the fact that mathematicians and physicists deal very largely with symbols, with abstractions as opposed to realities, and that they therefore easily fall a prey to this sort of thing?"

Sir Joseph shrugged his shoulders and tried hard to look wise.

"The worst of it is," Lord Henry pursued, "the adherence of a man like Borridge, makes lesser men imagine that the creed to which he lends his support, must have something in it."

Mrs. Delarayne contented herself with pouting, and casting a glance full of distress signals at Sir Joseph.

But Sir Joseph appeared not to notice, and taking unnecessarily large bites at a piece of cake he held, was evidently hoping to convey the impression that a sudden and inconvenient access of appetite prevented his opposing Lord Henry as violently as he might otherwise have done on the subject of the Inner Light.

The occupants of the room were beginning to revolve in that purposeful manner which augurs of leave-taking. People came up to shake hands with their hostess, and gradually the library emptied. Only Denis Malster, St. Maur, Sir Joseph, and Lord Henry remained.

Their hostess fidgeted uneasily. She wished to be alone with Lord Henry.

Gradually the others understood, and ultimately took their leave.