uch of the Gospels, this very raising of Lazarus, for
instance, seems to me no longer true in the historical sense, still they
are always full to me of an ideal, a poetical truth? Lazarus may not
have died and come to life, may never have existed; but still to me, now
as always, love for Jesus of Nazareth is "resurrection" and "life?"'

He spoke with the most painful diffidence, the most wistful tenderness.

There was a pause. Then Catherine said, in a rigid, constrained voice,--

'If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, as reality, I cannot
see how they are true at all, or of any value.'

The next minute she rose, and, going to the little wooden
dressing-table, she began to brush out and plat for the night her
straight silky veil of hair. As she passed him Robert saw her face pale
and set.

He sat quiet another moment or two, and then he went toward her and took
her in his arms.

'Catherine,' he said to her, his lips trembling, 'am I never to speak my
mind to you anymore? Do you mean always to hold me at arm's length--to
refuse always to hear what I have to say in defence of the change which
has cost us both so much?'

She hesitated, trying hard to restrain herself. But it was of no use.
She broke into tears--quiet but most bitter tears.

'Robert, I cannot! Oh! you must see I cannot. It is not because I am
hard, but because I am weak. How can I stand up against you? I dare
not--I dare not. If you were not yourself--not my husband--'

Her voice dropped. Robert guessed that at the bottom of her resistance
there was an intolerable fear of what love might do with her if she once
gave it an opening. He felt himself cruel, brutal, and yet an urgent
sense of all that was at stake drove him on.

'I would not press or worry you, God knows!' he said, almost piteously,
kissing her forehead as she lay against him. 'But remember, Catherine, I
cannot put these things aside. I once thought I could--that I could fall
back on my historical work, and leave religious matters alone as far as
criticism was concerned. But I cannot. They fill my mind more and
more. I feel more and more impelled to search them out, and to put my
conclusions about them into shape. And all the time this is going on,
are you and I to remain strangers to one another, and all that concerns
our truest life--are we, Catherine?'

He spoke in a low voice of intense feeling. She turned her face and
pressed her lips to his hand. Both had the scene i