ted with longing? She must think about it
a little longer, though. She could not make up her mind the one way, and
would not the other. She would wait and see. She dared not yet.
Something might turn up to decide her. If she could but see into his
heart for a moment!

All this later time, she had been going to church every Sunday, and
listening to sermons in which the curate poured out the energy of a
faith growing stronger day by day; but not a word he said had as yet
laid hold of one root-fiber of her being. She judged, she accepted, she
admired, she refused, she condemned, but she never _did_. To many souls
hell itself seems a less frightful alternative than the agony of
resolve, of turning, of being born again; but Juliet had never got so
far as that: she had never yet looked the thing required of her in the
face. She came herself to wonder that she had made any stand at all
against the arguments of Faber. But how is it that any one who has been
educated in Christianity, yet does not become the disciple of Jesus
Christ, avoids becoming an atheist? To such the whole thing must look so
unlike what it really is! Does he prefer to keep half believing the
revelation, in order to attribute to it elements altogether unlovely,
and so justify himself in refusing it? Were it not better to reject it
altogether if it be not fit to be believed in? If he be unable to do
that, if he dare not proclaim an intellectual unbelief, if some
reverence for father or mother, some inward drawing toward the good
thing, some desire to keep an open door of escape, prevent, what a
hideous folly is the moral disregard! "The thing is true, but I don't
mind it!" What is this acknowledged heedlessness, this apologetic
arrogance? Is it a timid mockery, or the putting forth of a finger in
the very face of the Life of the world? I know well how foolish words
like these must seem to such as Faber, but for such they are not
written; they are written for the men and women who close the lids of
but half-blinded eyes, and think they do God service by not denying
that there is not a sun in the heavens. There may be some denying Christ
who shall fare better than they, when He comes to judge the world with a
judgment which even those whom He sends from Him shall confess to be
absolutely fair--a judgment whose very righteousness may be a
consolation to some upon whom it falls heavily.

That night Juliet hardly knew what she had said to Faber, and longed to
se