"You may well put that in. Do the generality of people believe the Bible? But as I was saying, from the very nature of your calling you come to live far away from us. Our old minister knows more about dead people than living. He knows all about the Jews and Greeks who lived eighteen centuries ago, but next to nothing of the young of his own church. My motives and temptations would be worse than Sanscrit to him,--harder to understand than the unsolved problems of mathematics. What does such a man know about the life of a young lady in society? That which influences me would seem less than nothing to him." "I think you misjudge your pastor. If you became well acquainted with him, you might find a heart overflowing with sympathy." "I can no more get acquainted with him than if he dwelt on Mount Olympus. If I were only a doctrine, he might study me up and know something about me. But there is so much flesh and blood about me that I fear I shall always be distasteful to ministers." "I assure you, Miss Marsden, I find you more interesting than some doctrines." "But you are young. You are on a vacation, and can for a time descend to trifles, but you will grow like the rest. As it is, you speak very guardedly, and intimate that I would be as nothing compared with other doctrines." "What is a doctrine, Miss Marsden?" "O, bless me, I don't know exactly; a sort of abstract summing up of either our qualities or God's qualities. The only doctrine I even half understand is that of 'total depravity,' and I sometimes fear it's true." "I think you are a great deal more interesting than the 'doctrine of total depravity,'" said Hemstead, laughing. "Perhaps you will come to think I am synonymous with it." "No fear. I have seen too much of you for that already." "What redeeming features have you seen?" He looked at her earnestly for a moment, and she sustained his gaze with an expression of such innocent sweetness that he said, a little impulsively, "All your features redeem you from that charge." "O, fie!" she exclaimed, "a pun and flattery in one breath!"