"That will do, Hannah; we will wait upon ourselves. Shame on you, sir! You are no connoisseur, since you cannot tell a lady's work from a kitchen-maid's. Moreover, you have shown that wretched doubting disposition again." Now that they were alone, Gregory said, earnestly, "I shall never doubt you again." "I hope you never will doubt that I wish to do you good, Mr. Gregory," she replied, passing him a cup of tea. "You have done me more good in a few brief hours than I ever hoped to receive. Miss Walton, how can I repay you?" "By being a better friend to yourself. Commence by eating this." He did not find it very difficult to comply. After a little time he said, "But my conscience condemns me for caring too much for myself." "And no doubt your conscience is right. The idea of being a friend to yourself and going against your conscience!" "Then I have ever been my own worst enemy." "I can believe that, and so you'll continue to be if you don't take another piece of toast." "And yet there has always seemed a fatal necessity for me to do wrong and go wrong. Miss Walton, you are made of different clay from me and most people that I know. It is your nature to be good and noble." "Nonsense!" said Annie, with a positive frown. "Different clay indeed! I imagine you do wrong for the same reason that I do, because you wish to; and you fail in doing right because you have nothing but your weak human will to keep you up." "And what keeps you up, pray?" "Can you even suppose that I or any one can be a Christian without Christ?" He gave one of his incredulous shrugs. "Now what may that mean?" she asked. "Pardon me if I say that I think yours is a pretty and harmless superstition. This world is one of inexorable law and necessity down to the minutest thing. A weed is always a weed. A rose is always a rose. It's my misfortune to be a weed. It's your good fortune to be a rose." Annie looked as if she might become a briery one at that moment, for this direct style of compliment, though honest, was not agreeable. Conscious of many struggles with evil, it was even painful, for it did her injustice in two aspects of the case. So she said, dryly, "What an automaton you make me out to be!" "How so?" "If I merely do right as the rose grows, I deserve no credit. I'm but little better than a machine." "Not at all. I compared you to something that has a beautiful life of its own. But I would willingly be a machine, and a very angular, uncouth one too, if some outside power would only work me right and to some purpose." "Such talk seems to me idle, Mr. Gregory. I know that I have to try very hard to do right, and I often fail. I do not believe that our very existence begins in a lie, as it were, for from earliest years conscience tells us that we needn't do wrong and ought not to. Honestly now, isn't this true of your conscience?" "But my reason concludes otherwise, and reason is above conscience--above everything, and one must abide by its decisions."