“Whom do you mean by everybody else?” demanded Helen quickly. “Your uncle, Mr. Hermon Worcester? The Trustees? The Faculty? And those old men on the council? Oh, I know them! Haven’t I dined and breakfasted on Councils and Faculties ever since we came here? Haven’t I eaten and drunken and breathed Trustees and doctrines, and what is sound, and what isn’t, and--Don’t you tell, but I never was afraid of a Trustee in my life--never! I don’t know another soul in Cesarea who isn’t,--not even my father. When I was a little girl, I used to ruffle up their beaver hats the wrong way, out in the hall, so they would look dissipated when they went over to the chapel. Then I hid behind the door to see. But I never told of it--before. You won’t tell your uncle, will you? I hid a kitten in his hat, once, and when he came out of the study the hat was walking all over the hall floor, without visible means of locomotion.” Bayard laughed, as she had meant he should. The tense expression of his face relaxed; she watched him narrowly. “Come,” she said in a changed tone, “take me home, please. The house is full of Anniversary company. I ought to be there.” He turned at her command, and took her towards her father’s house. They walked in silence down the long Seminary path. She was dressed in light muslin with a violet on it, and wore ribbons that matched the violet. She had a square of white lace thrown over her bright hair. The meshes of the tracery from the elm-trees fell thickly under her quick tread. At the stone posts which guarded the great lawns, she hesitated; then set her feet resolutely out from the delicate net into the bright spaces of the open road. “Mr. Bayard,” she said in her clear voice, “you _are_ an honest man. It is better to be that than to be a minister.” “If one cannot be both,” amended Bayard. “But to start in like this, with a slur attached to one’s name at the beginning,--I don’t suppose you understand how it dooms a fellow, Miss Carruth. Its equivalent would be almost enough to disbar a man in law, or to ruin him in medicine.” “I understand the whole miserable subject!” cried Helen hotly. “I am sick to my soul of it! I wish”--She checked herself. “Let me see,” she added more calmly. “What was it they tormented you about? Eternal punishment?” “I managed to escape on that,” said Bayard. “I don’t know anything about it, and I said so. I think, myself, there is a good deal of cheap talk afloat on that subject. Our newspapers and novels are full of it. It is about the only difficult doctrine in theology that outsiders understand the relations of; so they stick on that, and make the most of it. It is an easy way of making the Christian religion intolerable--if one wants to. My difficulty was rather with--I see you know something of our technical terms--with what we call verbal inspiration.”