She paused a moment, and he thought how little need she could ever have of any charitable suspension of judgment. He knew well enough by instinct, that this inability to hear Mass must be the great disinheritance of her life here on the prairie, her submission to it, her great obedience. "But," she went on earnestly, "I hope you will not take any scandal at my father either--from my saying that he would not permit my going down to Maxwell and staying there all night on Saturday so as to hear Mass on Sunday morning. (There is, you know, only one Mass there, and that very early, because the priest has to go far into the county on the other side of Maxwell to give another Mass.) We know no family down there with whom I could stay. He would think it impossible I should stay with strange people--or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas would forbid that." "Oh, yes; I can fully understand. You need not fear my being so stupid as to take scandal. I have all my life had enough to do being scandalized at myself." "Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that always. Only one knows that God is more indulgent to one's faults than one has learned to be oneself; that patience comes so very slowly, and slower still the humility that would teach one to be never surprised at any fault in oneself." Gore reverenced her too truly to say, "Any fault would surprise _me_ in you." He only assented to her words, as if they were plain and cold matter-of-fact, and let her go on, for he knew she had more to say. "I would like," she told him, "to finish about my father. Because to you he may seem just careless. You may think, 'But why should not _he_ take her down to Maxwell and hear Mass himself also?' Coming from the usual life of Catholics to this life of ours on the prairies, it may easily occur to you like that. You cannot possibly know--as if you had read it in a book--a man's life like my father's. He was born far away from here, out in the desert--in New Mexico. His father baptized him--just as _he_ baptized me. There was no priest. There was no Mass. How could he learn to think it a necessary part of life? no one can learn to think necessary what is impossible. From that desert he came to this wilderness; very different, but just as empty. No Mass here either, no priest. How could he be expected to think it necessary to ride far, far away to find Mass? It would be to him like riding away to find a picture gallery. He _couldn't_ be away every Saturday and Sunday. That would not be possible; and what is not possible is no sin. And what is no sin on three Sundays out of four, or one Sunday out of two, how should it seem a sin on the other Sunday? I hope you will understand all that." "Indeed, yes! I hope you do not think I have been judging your father! That would be a great impertinence."