curiously in the flashing way that was peculiar to
her, for something in his tone and manner impressed her.

"Perhaps. I hope so, Godfrey, but at present I often feel as though I
believed in nothing, except that I am I and you are you, and my father
is--there he's calling me. Goodbye," and she was gone.

This particular conversation, one of many, had, as it happened,
important results on the lives of these two young creatures. Isobel, in
whom the love of Truth, however ugly it might be and however
destructive of hope, faith, charity and all the virtues, was a burning,
inbred passion, took to the secret study of theology in order to find
out why Godfrey was so convinced as to the teachings of the Bible. She
was not old or mellowed enough to understand that the real reason must
be discovered, not in the letter but in the spirit, that is in the
esoteric meaning of the sayings as to receiving the Kingdom of Heaven
like a child and the necessity of being born again. Therefore with a
fierce intensity, thrusting aside the spirit and its promptings which
perhaps are shadows of the only real truths, she wrestled with the
letter. She read the Divines, also much of the Higher Criticism, the
lives of Saints, the Sacred Books themselves and many other things,
only to arise bewildered, and to a great extent unbelieving.

"Why should I believe what I cannot prove?" she cried in her heart, and
once with her lips to Godfrey.

He made her a very wise answer, although at the moment it did not
strike either of them in that light.

"When you tell me of anything that you can really prove, I will show
you why," he said. To this he added a suggestion that was most unwise,
namely, that she should consult his father.

Now Mr. Knight was, it is true, a skilled theologian of a certain,
narrow school and learned in his way. It is probable, however, that in
all the wide world it would have been difficult to find any man less
sympathetic to a mind like Isobel's or more likely to antagonize her
eager and budding intelligence. Every doubt he met with intolerant
denial; every argument with offensive contradiction; every query with
references to texts.

Finally, he lost his temper, for be it acknowledged, that this girl was
persistent, far from humble, and in a way as dogmatic as himself. He
told her that she was not a Christian, and in her wrath she agreed with
him. He said that she had no right to be in church. She replied that if
this were so