Gosse arrived with small presents from London, and immediately declared that he was the happiest man in England now that he had quit the city, that it was a hateful place during the festive season with far too frivolous a social life and an unspeakable fog, some of which had entered into the crania of the very best minds of his generation.

William smiled in appreciation as Peggy glanced at Henry.

‘I told my niece that you love London more than you love life,’ Henry said.

‘And so I do,’ Gosse replied. ‘But that does not say much for life.’

Gosse turned then to William who stood at the mantelpiece sipping his sherry. His tone was formal, having suddenly changed from being amused and charming, as he addressed William.

‘May I say how much pleasure it gives me to meet you again? I have been reading you for many years. I share with Leslie Stephen the habit of reading you for pleasure, just as I read your brother for pleasure. I find very little nowadays which possesses such precision and such energy and such poetry, if I may say so, at the same time.’

William smiled and nodded and returned the compliment. Alice seemed to glow with happiness that someone had come to visit who would not annoy William. She smiled at Henry knowingly.

As the meal was served, Gosse informed them of the controversy over the day of prayer announced as a result of the defeat by the Boers. He did not, Henry noticed, make his own view clear on the matter but managed to let them know that he had listened to the Prince of Wales discuss the topic as well as Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr Asquith and Mr Alfred Austen. As he continued to outline the various positions of those he named, fixing each of them at the table with a significant stare as a new dignitary was mentioned, Henry noticed Alice becoming agitated and looking at William in a manner which he had not seen before, almost threateningly.

‘Yes,’ William said, when Gosse had left a gap in his narrative, ‘I wrote a letter to The Times on the subject but they have failed to print it.’

‘William!’ Alice interjected.

‘A letter to The Times?’ Gosse asked. ‘What line did you take?’

William hesitated and then stared into the middle distance.

‘I said that I was an American travelling in this country and that I had noted the controversy over the proposed day of prayer and I would suggest that the principles established by one of the early Montana settlers might be the most useful and generally acceptable.’

‘And what were they?’ Gosse asked.

‘Our settler was met by a very formidable and angry grizzly bear and he fell on his knees and his prayer was as follows: "O Lord, I hain’t never asked you for help, and ain’t agoin’ to ask you for none now. But for pity’s sake, O Lord, please don’t help the bear." The Times, in its wisdom, did not print the letter.’

‘I hope that you gave the outback as your address,’ Henry said.

‘I gave my address as care of Lamb House, Rye,’ William replied.

‘I think that is one of the main differences,’ Gosse said, ‘between the United States and our country. One can be sure about many things here and one is that The Times would not print that letter.’

‘So much the better for The Times,’ Henry said.

‘So much the worse for my poor letter,’ William replied.

‘I’m sure there are a number of Irish periodicals that would print it,’ Gosse said. ‘You should not let it go to waste.’

‘It has not gone to waste,’ Alice said. ‘He has just told us its contents, having made me a promise that he would never mention it again to a living soul.’

‘Nor shall I,’ William said.

‘Perhaps you could convey the contents of the letter to the Prince of Wales,’ Henry said to Gosse.

Gosse looked at him sharply.

‘I wonder, since it is the beginning of the new year, if both of you, the writers here, might tell us what you have in store,’ Gosse said.

‘My brother,’ Henry said, ‘is to deliver the Gifford lectures at Edinburgh.’

‘On the new science of psychology?’ Gosse asked.

‘On the old science of religion,’ William replied.

‘Have you written the lectures?’ Gosse enquired.

‘I have notes and ideas and some pages and a bad heart,’ William said. ‘So it takes time.’

‘What position will you adopt?’

‘I believe that religion, in its broadest sense, is indestructible,’ William said. ‘I believe the mystical experience of the individual, in any of its manifestations, to be a possession of an extended subliminal self.’

Henry made a sign to Peggy that if she wished to leave them now and return to her book, then she could do so. Her mother nodded in agreement. She excused herself and left the room.

‘But what,’ Gosse asked, ‘if religion should be proved false?’

‘I wish to argue,’ William said, ‘that religious feeling cannot be disproved since it belongs so fundamentally to the self. And if it is a belief that belongs so fundamentally to the self then it must be good, and, insofar as that goes, it must be true.’

‘But if you look at what Darwin and his supporters can show, surely they can prove that certain beliefs are untrue?’

‘I am interested in religious feeling or experience rather than religious argument,’ William said. ‘I wish to make clear that even the very words I use are open and evasive and sometimes useless, that there are no precise words because there are no precise feelings. We have mixed feelings and complex sensibilities and we must allow for that in our lives and in our law and in our politics, but most importantly, in the deepest core of ourselves.’

‘In which the transcendental plays a part?’ Gosse asked.

‘Yes, but it may be more fundamental than that,’ William said. ‘The world beyond the sense, in which a sphere of life more powerful and larger than ourselves exists, may be continuous with our consciousness and we may know this and this may cause us to believe or have religious feeling, however vague, in a more satisfying way than we have religious argument.’

William spoke naturally and easily, his good humour adding to the almost conversational tone of his delivery, a tone Henry had never heard before.

‘You sound as though you have written the lectures,’ Gosse said.

‘I have formulated them,’ William said. ‘Writing does not come naturally to me. I prefer talking but since in this case they want to publish them too, then I will have to write them out word for word.’

‘Perhaps The Times will publish them when they are delivered,’ Gosse said.

‘The Times will receive no further communication from me. It had its opportunity.’ William laughed and lifted his glass and drank.

‘Henry,’ Gosse said, ‘it is your turn.You must tell us now what you will write so that we can look forward to it.’

‘I am a poor story-teller,’ Henry said, ‘a romancer, interested in dramatic niceties.While my brother makes sense of the world, I can only briefly attempt to make it come alive, or become stranger. Once I wrote about youth and America and now I am left with exile and middle age and stories of disappointment which are unlikely to win me many readers on either side of the Atlantic.’

‘Harry, you have many devoted readers,’ Alice said.

‘I have in mind a man who all his life believes that something dreadful will happen to him,’ Henry said. ‘He tells a woman of this unknown catastrophe and she becomes his greatest friend, but what he does not see is that his failure to believe in her, his own coldness, is the catastrophe, it has come already, it has lived within him all along.’

‘Is that the end?’ William asked.

‘Yes, but there is also a man in a different story who goes to Paris from New England. He is an American of middle age, with much intelligence and a sensuous nature which has remained hidden throughout his life. He sees Paris and understands, like the man in the earlier story, that it is our duty to live all we can, but it is too late, or perhaps it is not.’