Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potential advantage, but miss truth, by confusing them. Oliver Vyell was dull, and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was so lucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide all men's, all women's, tenderest feelings. He knew that Ruth had no more faith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister's intervention could do to sanctify marriage. He had inferred that she must consider the tying of the knot by Mr. Silk, if not as a fair jest, at least as a gentle mockery, the humour of which he and she would afterwards taste together. Why had she not pleaded against rite of any kind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal. Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised his secret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin to be on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things to be open where it loves. Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson to put on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared not disobey, to perform the ceremony. Mr. Silk had cringed. Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on him but as a witness to his triumph. The very man who had sentenced her to degradation--was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to behold her exalted? For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passion for her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, the conviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her. Would not ten thousand women--would not a hundred thousand--have counted it heaven to stand in her place? Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of these women would have meant everything. This puzzled him. On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved. She accepted his negations, and, woman-like, improved on them. The marriage service was humbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it. The attitude was touching. It might have been convenient, had he been less in love. But he was deeply in love, so deeply that in good earnest he longed to lift and set her above all women. For this, nonsensical though they were, due rites must be observed. At the last pinch she had broken away. Was it possible, then, that after all she did not love him? She had crossed her arms once and called herself his slave. . . . Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy that to contaminate the rite is to poison all. Not as yet did he understand one whit of this. But he vehemently desired her, and his desire was straight. Because it was straight, while he rode some inkling of the truth pierced him.