ng confidant, during
the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know
the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals,
the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also
knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond
the petty ones concerning food and raiment and mere personal
advancement, her ruthless disregard of all that related to her
husband's individual or professional welfare. Scott Brenton spoke even
of his doubts with a reverent reticence. Kathryn Brenton vaunted her
supposed beliefs in phrases which, even to the bluff old doctor's ears,
amounted to the extreme of blasphemy. The rector, even in the richness
of his humour, treated as somehow fine and sacred matters of every-day
routine. The rector's lady took the very materials that went into her
husband's Sunday sermons, and used them as themes for joking of a
species which passed the limits of the doctor's comprehension. To
Scott, the very religion that he sought to question, was a pure white
lily reverently to be placed beneath his microscope. To Kathryn, it was
a red, red rose to be worn flauntingly upon the apex of her Sunday hat.
On week days, she was developing a cheap irreverence which never could
be in danger of turning into anything more vital. It needs some brains
and no small amount of reverence in any man, before he can become an
honest agnostic; in both brains and reverence, Kathryn was supremely
lacking.

How far this lack of reverence resulted from her husband's vacillating
viewpoint, the doctor could not fathom. More than a little, he
surmised. Had Brenton never wavered in his theology, Kathryn would have
clung like a limpet to the bed-rock of her congenital Baptist faith.
And yet, the doctor could not hold Brenton altogether responsible for
Kathryn's development. The germs of mental cheapness were in Kathryn's
nature, as were the germs of more or less illogical doubtings just as
surely inherent in Scott Brenton's brain. He had increased the
tendency, not created it.

Neither could the doctor quite make up his mind whether the two of them
were conscious of the growing gulf between them. To begin with, he
could not decide whether, on their wedding day, there ever had been any
real spiritual tangency between them. Reed said not; but Reed had been
young, at the time of his earlier acquaintance with them, and so
incapable of forming any stable judgment. Knowing Br