“Do the ladies try to win your favor, cousin? I thought they all feared you. You must acknowledge I have never shown any desire to please you.” In the still sunny air, in the warmth and glow of a life which he could not stifle, standing face to face with the loveliest eyes he had ever seen, Pierre found himself engaged in an unusual conflict, and felt he must utter a vehement protest against the fatal, alluring attraction. The peculiar susceptibility to impressions which rendered him pliant to priestly influence also gave rise to endless complications against which he had no defence. “Cast from you that levity destructive to the soul,” he urged. “But it is levity that I delight in,” she replied, tapping a dainty high-heeled shoe upon the gravelled walk. “One can be young but once. When old age overtakes me I shall devote myself to good works. When that time comes then shall we, perhaps, be better friends; at that season I may perchance enjoy your sermons, cousin.” Pierre strove hard to maintain his tone of gentle superiority and to continue the discussion on a line of persuasive argument, but he was nervously impatient. A tinge of uncertainty was shadowed in his manner, a tumultuous excitement, a badgered, hopeless, still struggling shame. It was not often that he had the opportunity of holding a long conversation with the girl; he felt obliged to make the best of the occasion. “That is the doctrine of the devil. Canada is indeed the fold of Christ, but the hosts of this world are beleaguering the sanctuary. Diane, is the glory of the Church to suffer prejudice from your actions? We are in the midst of sin. Remember that death is close at hand.” These words jarred upon Diane’s mood. She resented Pierre’s air of dissatisfied inspection, his assumption that his own judgment must be fundamentally and eternally right. “Then let me be happy while I may. All have not the vocation to be saints and martyrs. We are young, the sun shines, life is fair and sweet, and God is good.” Pierre looked at her in evident anger, the wrathful disguise of tortured love. His reason was hampered in its action. He was unable to exercise any discriminating faculty. There was something pathetic in his insistence, for he plainly perceived that his importunities were unavailing. His desire for sympathy was so urgent and all occupying that he could not thrust it aside. The proud, untamable creature, so arch, so kind, so generous, with her whims and caprices and beauty, alive with spirit and energy, seemed to him the embodiment of all he had renounced. Had he only the power to mould her into an entirely different form, to convert her into a bloodless personification of sanctity, he was convinced that he would be saving her soul.