Thomas Wingfold was almost as different from Richard’s idea of a clergyman, as Richard’s imagined God was from any believable idea of God. The two men had never yet met, for what should bring a working man and the clergyman of the next parish together? But early one morning—he often went for a walk in the early morning—Richard saw in front of him, in the middle of a field-path, a gray-suited man seated on a stile, evidently enjoying himself an hour before sunrise. Somehow he knew he was not a working man, but he did not suspect him one of the obnoxious class which he considered the clergy. Wingfold heard Richard’s step, looked round, knew him at once as an artisan of some sort, and saw in him signs of purpose and character strong for his years.

“Wonderful morning!” he said.

“Indeed it is, sir!” answered Richard.

“I like a walk in the morning better than at any other time of the day,” said Wingfold.

“So do I, though I can’t tell why. I’ve often thought about it, but I haven’t yet found out what makes the morning so different.”

As they chatted, Richard remarked to himself that whoever the gentleman was, he was certainly not stuck-up. They might have parted as close friends the night before instead of meeting now for the first time.

“I think,” returned Wingfold, “that it must be a little like looking on the sleeping face of a loved one. As you watch such a one come awake, you see it grow into life, radiant with sunrise. In the same way, in the sunrise you can watch the thought in the twilight face of nature come awake with sunlight.”

“A pretty simile,” said Richard, “but I’m afraid I cannot go along with you, sir.” For all the impression Barbara had made on him, he had not yet thought of the world as in any sense alive.

“Why?” asked Wingfold.

“Because I cannot allow there to be thought where no thought exists.”

“Ah, you do not allow that there is personality beneath the face of Nature?”

“That is what I would say, sir,” answered Richard.

“You conceive the world as a sort of machine—like a clock, for instance, whose duty it is to tell the time of day?”

“Yes. Only one machine may have many uses!”

“True,” said the rector. “A clock may do more for us than tell the time. It may tell how fast it is going, and it may wake solemn thought. But if you came upon a machine that constantly awoke within you—not thoughts only, but the most delicate and indescribable feelings—what would you say then?”

“Surely not that the machine was thinking!”