"The truth is stable without effort or will of mine," she returned, smiling; "but surely you would have human appreciation of it advance."
He felt that there must be an answer to this, but he was not able to see just what it was, and he shifted the question.
"But Mr. Strathmore," he said hesitatingly, "is married."
"Yes," she assented. "'The husband of one wife.'"
"If you begin to quote Scripture against me," Maurice retorted, laughing in spite of himself, "I might easily reply to St. Paul by St. Paul. But letting that pass, it is certainly true that the church has always held that marriage absorbs a man in earthly things so that he cannot give the best of his thoughts to his work."
"When the church sets itself against marriage," Mrs. Morison responded quietly, "it seems to me to be setting up to know more than the Creator of the race."
Maurice colored, although he might not have been able to tell whether his strongest feeling was horror at this bold language or joy at the emphasis with which she spoke.
"Perhaps I should beg your pardon for saying so frankly what I think," Mrs. Morison continued. "It isn't the way in which one generally talks to a clergyman; but the subject is one for which I haven't much patience, and of course I couldn't help seeing that you are in doubt yourself."
"What do you mean?" he stammered. "I--I in doubt?"
"I hadn't any intention of forcing your confidence," returned she. "I am an old woman, and sometimes I find that I don't make allowance enough for the slowness of you young people in arriving at a knowledge of self."
"Until this moment," he said, "I have never acknowledged to myself that I was in doubt. I see what you mean, and it shows that I have been playing with fire."
She looked at him questioningly, then turned the subject.
"Which is perhaps a hint that our fire is going down. Sit still, please. Every woman likes to tend her own fire."
"I should have learned that by this time," was his answer. "I lost an inheritance once by insisting upon fixing a fire."
"That sounds interesting. Is it proper to ask for the story?"
"Oh, there isn't much of a story. I had a great-aunt who was worth a lot of money, and who was eccentric. She was in a way fond of me when I was a child, and used to have me at the house a good deal. I confess I didn't like it much. Things went by rule, and the rules were often pretty queer. One of them was that nobody should presume to touch the fire if she was in the room. I liked to play with the fire as well as she did, and when I was a boy just in my teens I used to do it. After she'd corrected me half a dozen times I got into my foolish pate that it was my duty to cure her of her whim. So I set to poking the fire ostentatiously until she lost her temper and ordered me out of the house. Then she burned up the will in my favor and made a new one, giving all her money to the church."