So on George Stransom's part had grown up with the years a resolve that he at least would do something, do it, that is, for his own--would perform the great charity without reproach.

Every man _had_ his own, and every man had, to meet this charity, the ample resources of the soul.
It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that spoke for them best; as the years at any rate went by he found himself in regular communion with these postponed pensioners, those whom indeed he always called in his thoughts the Others.

He spared them the moments, he organised the charity.

Quite how it had risen he probably never could have told you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such as was after all within everybody's compass, lighted with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual spaces.

He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he hadn't at all events the religion some of the people he had known wanted him to have.