"I won't move till I have my answer! Please tell me--would--would you regard him as a lost soul?" "Dearest! I am neither Williams's judge nor anyone else's! Of course I must hold that a man who breaks the most solemn vows endangers his soul. What else do you expect of me?" "What do you mean by 'soul'? Have I a soul?--and what do you suppose is going to happen to it?" The words were flung out with a concentrated passion--almost an anguish--that for the moment struck him dumb. They both grew pale; he looked at her steadily, and spoke her name, in a low appealing voice. But she took no notice; she rose, and, turning away from him, she leant against the mantelpiece, speaking with a choking eagerness that forced its way. "You were in the chapel last night--very late. I know, for I heard the door open and shut. You must be unhappy, or you wouldn't spend so much time praying. Are you unhappy about me? I know you don't want to force me; but if, in time, I don't agree with you--if it goes on all our lives--how can you help thinking that I shall be lost--lost eternally--separated from you? You would think it of Mr. Williams if he left the Church. I know you told me once about ignorance--invincible ignorance. But here there will be no ignorance. I shall have seen everything--heard everything--known everything. If living here doesn't teach one, what could? And"--she paused, then resumed with even greater emphasis--"and as far as I can see I shall reject it all--wilfully, knowingly, deliberately. What will you say? What do you say now--to yourself--when--when you pray for me? What do you really think--what do you fear--what _must_ you fear? I ought to know." Helbeck looked at her without answering for a long moment. Her agitation, his painful silence, bore pitiful testimony to the strange, insurmountable reality of those facts of the spirit that stood like rocks in the stream of their love. At last he held out his hands to her with that half-reproachful gesture he had often used towards her. "I fear nothing!--I hope everything. You never forbade me that. Will you leave my love no mysteries, Laura--no reserve? Nothing for you to discover and explore as time goes on?" She trembled under the mingled remonstrance and passion of his tone. But she persisted. "It's because--I feel--other things come before love. Tell me--I have a right to know. I shall never come first--quite first--shall I?" She forced the saddest, proudest of smiles, as he took her reluctant hands. And involuntarily her eyes travelled over the room, over the crucifix above the faldstool, the little altar to St. Joseph, the worn books upon his table. They were to her like the weapons and symbols of an enemy. He made her no direct answer. His face was for a moment grave and set. Then he roused himself, kissed the hands he held, and resolutely began to talk of something else.