not at all sure that I want to take it. But you must tell
me more--more of what you have discovered. Will you?"

He just hesitated. She herself appeared to acknowledge no bar to their
further intimacy--why should he?

"I will tell you all I know," he said.

Suddenly, as if by a transference of thought, she voiced what he had in
mind.

"You are going to tell them the truth about themselves!" she exclaimed.
"--That they are not Christians!"

His silence was an admission.

"You must see," he told her, after the moment they had looked into each
other's faces, "that this is the main reason why I must stay at St.
John's, in the Church, if I conscientiously can."

"I see. The easier course would be to resign, to have scruples. And you
believe there is a future for the Church."

"I believe it," he assented.

She still held his eyes.

"Yes, it is worth doing. If you see it that way it is more worth
doing than anything else. Please don't think," she said, "that I don't
appreciate why you have told me all this, why you have given me your
reasons. I know it hasn't been easy. It's because you wish me to have
faith in you for my own sake, not for yours. And I am grateful."

"And if that faith is justified, as you will help to justify it, that it
may be transferred to a larger sphere," he answered.

She gave him her hand, but did not reply.

CHAPTER XIX. MR. GOODRICH BECOMES A PARTISAN

I

In these days of his preparation, she haunted him continually. In her
he saw typified all those who possessed the divine discontent, the
yearning unsatisfied,--the fatalists and the dreamers. And yet she
seemed to have risen through instinct to share the fire of his vision
of religion revealed to the countless ranks of strugglers as the hidden
motive-power of the world, the impetus of scientist, statesman, artist,
and philanthropist! They had stood together on the heights of the larger
view, whence the whole of the battle-line lay disclosed.

At other and more poignant moments he saw her as waving him bravely on
while he steamed out through towering seas to safety. The impression
was that of smiling at her destiny. Had she fixed upon it? and did
she linger now only that she might inspire him in his charge? She was
capable, he knew, of taking calmly the irrevocable step, of accepting
the decree as she read it. The thought tortured, the desire to save her
from herself obsessed him; with true clairvoyance she had divined h