"Dear Philip," she said, "I can't tell you how I enter into your feeling. I don't agree with you, but we are not so far apart in temperament, if we are in doctrine. I'm afraid that you'll think that I'm merely tempting you when I say that it seems to me that your conscientiousness is entirely right, and that your conviction is all wrong."
"Of course I know that you do not hold the same faith that I do."
"But one of your own faith might remind you that your own church upholds the marriage of the clergy."
"Yes," he assented with apparent unwillingness, "but my conscience does not."
"Do you mean that you find your conscience a better guide than the church? That seems to put you on my ground, after all."
"Oh, no, no! Certainly I do not put myself above the authority of the church."
"The eagerness with which you disclaim any common ground with me isn't polite," she retorted, glad of a chance to speak more lightly and smilingly; "but it's sincere, and that is better."
"I wasn't trying to disclaim thinking as you do; but to insist that I do not set myself above the church."
"Then I repeat that the church sanctions the marriage of the clergy. If you don't agree, I don't see why you do not really belong in the Roman Catholic Church."
There was a long pause, during which she watched her cousin narrowly. He seemed to be thinking deeply, with eyes intent on the fire. She was so little prepared for the direction which his thought took that she was startled when he said at last with a sigh:--
"I do sometimes find myself envying the absolute authority with which the Roman Catholic Church speaks."
"Authority!" she repeated indignantly. "Do you mean that you wish to give up your individuality?"
"No; not that; but it must be of unspeakable comfort in times of mental doubt to repose on unquestioned and unquestionable authority."
Helen rose from her place by the fire and walked to the window. She felt that she was on very delicate ground, and she would gladly have escaped from the discussion could she have done so without the feeling of having evaded. She stood a moment looking out into the darkening street, dusky in the growing January twilight, bleak and dreary. Then with a sudden movement she went to her husband's desk and took up a picture of her boy, a beautiful, manly little fellow of three years, of whom Philip was especially fond. Crossing to her cousin, she put the picture in his hand, at the same time turning up the electric light behind him.
