, in that moment, her quick
instinct divined something of his case, something of the mental
suffering he strove to conceal. Contrition shone in her eyes.

"I ought not to have said that," she exclaimed gently. "It is so easy
for outsiders to criticize those who are sincere--and I am sure you are.
We cannot know all the perplexities. But when we look at the Church, we
are puzzled by that--which I have mentioned--and by other things."

"What other things?" he demanded.

She hesitated in her turn.

"I suppose you think it odd, my having gone to church, feeling as I do,"
she said. "But St. John's is now the only place vividly associated with
my mother. She was never at home here, in this house. I always go at
least once when I am out here. And I listened to your sermon intently."

"Yes."

"I wanted to tell you this: you interested me as I had not been
interested since I was twenty, when I made a desperate attempt to become
a Christian--and failed. Do you know how you struck me? It was as a
man who actually had a great truth which he was desperately trying to
impart, and could not. I have not been in a church more than a dozen
times in the last eight years, but you impressed me as a man who felt
something--whatever it is."

He did not speak.

"But why," she cried, "do you insist on what you cell authority? As
a modern woman who has learned to use her own mind, I simply can't
believe, if the God of the universe is the moral God you assert him to
be, that he has established on earth an agency of the kind you infer,
and delegated to it the power of life and death over human souls.
Perhaps you do not go so far, but if you make the claim at all you must
make it in its entirety. There is an idea of commercialism, of monopoly
in that conception which is utterly repugnant to any one who tries to
approach the subject with a fresh mind, and from an ideal point of view.
And religion must be idealism--mustn't it?

"Your ancient monks and saints weren't satisfied until they had settled
every detail of the invisible world, of the past and future. They
mapped it out as if it were a region they had actually explored, like
geographers. They used their reason, and what science they had, to make
theories about it which the churches still proclaim as the catholic and
final truth. You forbid us to use our reason. You declare, in order to
become Christians, that we have to accept authoritative statements. Oh,
can't you see that an auth