l, when
I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open
arms of the mother Church--on whose loving bosom of authority a man may
lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind."

Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.

"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the most fascinating
of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn't it
fine, Allan--doesn't the very thought excite you--that not only the
souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be
affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with
which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual
values--and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How
truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!"

The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this bald wording of his
responsibility; then he sighed and bent his head as one honestly
conscious of the situation's gravity.

CHAPTER X

THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON

It was not a jest--Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going
to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence
to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner
woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a
secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice
overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise
of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could
hear them.

When the exciting time of this listening had gone and she stepped from
the train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart
spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats--a thing which, now
that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at
the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees
weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might bend
embarrassingly in either direction.

Then in the outer spaces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of
her crass fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any
acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably
seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road
through its greening elms to where Clytie kept the big house--her own
home while she lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go
there.

At last, the silent, cool house