before, to a low chair by the open window looking on the wide
moonlit expanse of cornfield. He put her into it, walked to the window
on the other side of the room, shut it, and drew down the blind. Then he
went back to her, and sank down beside her, kneeling, her hands in his--

'My dear wife--you have loved me--you do love me?'

She could not answer, she could only press his hands with her cold
fingers, with a look and gesture that implored him to speak.

'Catherine'--he said, still kneeling before her--'you remember that
night you came down to me in the study, the night I told you I was in
trouble and you could not help me. Did you guess from what I said what
the trouble was?'

'Yes,' she answered trembling, 'yes, I did, Robert; I thought you were
depressed--troubled--about religion.'

'And I know,'--he said with an outburst of feeling, kissing her hands
as they lay in his--'I know very well that you went up stairs and prayed
for me, my white-souled angel! But Catherine, the trouble grew--it got
blacker and blacker. You were there beside me, and you could not help
me. I dared not tell you about it; I could only struggle on alone, so
terribly alone, sometimes; and now I am beaten, beaten. And I come to
you to ask you to help me in the only thing that remains to me. Help me,
Catherine, to be an honest man--to follow conscience--to say and do the
truth!'

'Robert,' she said piteously, deadly pale; 'I don't understand.'

'Oh, my poor darling!' he cried, with a kind of moan of pity and misery.
Then still holding her, he said, with strong deliberate emphasis,
looking into the gray-blue eyes--the quivering face so full of austerity
and delicacy,--

'For six or seven months, Catherine--really for much longer, though
I never knew it--I have been fighting with _doubt_--doubt of orthodox
Christianity--doubt of what the Church teaches--of what I have to say
and preach every Sunday. First it crept on me I knew not how. Then the
weight grew heavier, and I began to struggle with it. I felt I must
struggle with it. Many men, I suppose, in my position would have
trampled on their doubts--would have regarded them as sin in themselves,
would have felt it their duty to ignore them as much as possible,
trusting to time and God's help. I _could_ not ignore them. The thought
of questioning the most sacred beliefs that you and I--' and his voice
faltered a moment--'held in common, was misery to me. On the other hand,
I knew myself.