hurts!"

"But, my child--my preposterous child! How can you have lost faith in
that husband of yours? What nonsense! Do you mean you have taken
seriously those harmless jesting little sallies of his about the snares
and pitfalls of a clergyman's life, or his tales of how this or that
silly woman has allowed him to detect in her that pure reverence which
most women do feel for a clergyman, whether he's handsome or not? Take
Mrs. Wyeth, for example--"

"Oh, Aunt Bell--no, no--how can you think--"

"I admit Allan is the least bit--er--redundant of those
anecdotes--perhaps just the least bit insistent about the snares and
pitfalls that beset an attractive man in his position. But really, my
dear--I know men--and you need never feel a twinge of jealousy. For one
thing, Allan would be held in bounds by fear of the world, even if his
love for you were inadequate to hold him."

"It's no use trying to make you understand, Aunt Bell--you _can't!_"

Whereupon Aunt Bell neglected her former device of pretending that she
did, indeed, understand, and bluntly asked:

"Well, what is it, child?"

"Nothing, nothing, nothing, Aunt Bell--it's only what he _is_."

"What he _is_? A handsome, agreeable, healthy, good-tempered, loyal,
upright, irreproachable--"

"Aunt Bell, he's _killing_ me. I seem to want to laugh when I tell you,
because it's so funny that he should have the power to--but I tell you
he's killing out all the good in me--a little bit every day. I can't
even _want_ to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see--that any
one could see! Sometimes I do forget and laugh all at once. It's as
grotesque and unreal as an imaginary monster I used to be afraid
of--then I'm sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws of
God and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell--the fire hasn't eaten
through yet--but I tell you it's burning inside day and night."

She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled listener.

"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell--burning out my goodness--if the
firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and
water--I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house--it
hurts so!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE APPLE OF DOUBT IS NIBBLED

The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his Easter sermon. He was
elated. Of the sermons delivered in New York that morning, he suspected
that his would be found not the least ingenious. Telling excerpts would
doub