It showed strength and doggedness and
will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not
dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little
timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits
beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.

"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.
"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't
interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for
marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you
want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people
live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.
They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they
must say. I don't like it."

"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"

"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was
something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."

"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I
was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at
all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had
gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same
as I was before."

"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you
a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,
"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,
with us, I mean?"

The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you
mean.

"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we
will be just the same to each other. If it should make something
different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be
the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you
would not be the same to me.

"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,
yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and
feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.
When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."

He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood
that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something
in her face with which he did not dare to argue.

He got up saying:

"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found yo