get hold of her."

"You never will, though you try for ever--not in your sense. She never
surrenders."

"Not even to God?"

"Speaking through you?"

"Through my office--yes."

"Aye, there's the rub! Besides--well, I can't discuss her from a moral
point of view; any information I may have seems somehow to have been
acquired confidentially."

"That's quite right, Austin."

"I'll only put before you a general suggestion. Doesn't our disposition
determine our attitude to these things much oftener than our attitude is
shaped by our opinions? Hence individual modifications--variations from
the general trend, whatever that may be. What a man--or woman--is in
worldly relations, isn't he apt to be in regard to religious affairs? If
a man thinks for himself in worldly affairs----"

"I'm not against thought," he broke in. "That's the eternal
misunderstanding!"

"But so often against the results of it?" I suggested. "And one reason
among others for that is because the result of individual thought is
often a decision to suspend generally accepted views in one's own
case--which you fellows don't like. I don't mind going so far as to say
that I think Miss Driver would be capable of suspending a generally
accepted view in her own case--but she wouldn't do it without thought or
indifferently. She would do it as a well-considered exercise of power.
Some people like power--I don't know whether a priest can understand
that?"

We had come to the "Church House" where he dwelt in barracks with his
curates. His eyes twinkled. "I know what you mean--and you can chaff as
much as you like--but I shall have a go at Miss Driver."

After a conversation a man of candid mind will often--and, if the
discussion has partaken in any degree of an argumentative character, I
would say generally--he left reflecting whether what he has said was
even as true as he meant to make it. As I had hinted, I talked to Alison
about Jenny with reserves, but even within their limits I doubted
whether I had given him the impression I had meant to convey. Perhaps he
understood, though he could never acknowledge as legitimate, my view
that she would feel entitled to treat herself as a special case. He
might even act on this view--always without acknowledging it; surely
Churches have been known to do that? He might approach her on that
footing--with the hope of changing it. I had meant to point out an
impossibility; I fancied I had indicated a task and communic