"It was quite an accident that I was there. But how could I help listening? I must know--I ought to know--what your Catholic friends think--what they say of me to you!" She was conscious of a childish petulance. But it was as though she could not help herself. "I wish you had not listened," he said, with gentle steadiness. "Won't you trust those things to me?" "What power have I beside theirs?" she said, turning away her head. He saw the trembling of the soft throat, and bent over her. "I only ask you, for both our sakes, not to test it too far!" And taking her hand by force, he crushed it passionately in his own. But she was only half appeased. Her mind, indeed, was in that miserable state when love finds its only pleasure in self-torment. With a secret change of ground she asked him how he was going to spend the day. He answered, reluctantly, that there was a Diocesan Committee that would take the afternoon, and that the morning must be largely given to the preparation of papers. "But you will come and look in upon me?--you will help me through?" She raised her shoulders resentfully. "And you have been, to Whinthorpe already!--Why do you go to Mass every morning?" she asked, looking up. "I know very few Catholics do. I wish you'd tell me." He looked embarrassed. "It has been my custom for a long time," he said at last. "But _why?_" "Inquisitive person!" Her look of pain checked him. He observed her rather sadly and silently for a moment, then said: "I will tell you, dear, of course, if you want to know. It is one of the obligations of the Third Order of St. Francis, to which I belong." "What does that mean?" He shortly explained. She cross-examined. He was forced to describe to her in detail all the main constitutions of the Third Order; its obligations as to fasting, attendance at Mass, and at the special meetings of the fraternity; its prescriptions of a rigid simplicity in life and dress; its prohibition of theatre-going. She stood amazed. All her old notions of Catholics as gay people, who practised a free Sunday and allowed you to enjoy yourself, had been long overthrown by the Catholicism of Bannisdale. But this--this might be Daffady's Methodism! "So that is why you would not take us to Whinthorpe the other day to see that London company?" "It was an unsuitable play," he said hastily. "Theatres are not wholly forbidden us; but the exceptions must be few, and the plays such as a Catholic can see without harm to his conscience." "But I love acting!" she cried, almost with a sense of suffocation. "Whenever I could, I got papa to take me to the play. I shall always want to go." "There will be nothing to prevent you." "So that anything is good enough for those who are not tertiaries!" she cried, confronting him. Her cheeks burned. Had there been any touch of spiritual arrogance in his tone? "I think I shall not answer that," he said, after a pause.