"She lived five years in a clergyman's family," I answered discreetly--feeling that it was safer to stick to indisputable facts. "She attends church fairly often, doesn't she?" "Yes, fairly often." He repeated my words with a contemptuous grimace. "People who attend church fairly often, Austin, are the people whom, if the good old days could come back, I should like to burn." "Of course you would. You all would, if you dared say so." "Just two or three to start with. I should like it done very conspicuously--in the market place." "The worst of it is that you're really quite sincere in all this." He pressed my arm. "I don't want to burn you. You've thought, though you've thought wrong. And you've been through tribulation. It's the people who in their hearts just don't----" "Care a damn?" I profanely suggested. "Yes," he agreed with a laugh and a grip on my wrist which distinctly hurt. "But I don't think Miss Driver's quite one of those. At any rate she's intellectually interested--talks about things, and so on." He nodded. "Yes, I daresay. Well, she's a remarkable girl. Look here--she's worth having, and I'm going to try to get hold of her." "You never will, though you try for ever--not in your sense. She never surrenders." "Not even to God?" "Speaking through you?" "Through my office--yes." "Aye, there's the rub! Besides--well, I can't discuss her from a moral point of view; any information I may have seems somehow to have been acquired confidentially." "That's quite right, Austin." "I'll only put before you a general suggestion. Doesn't our disposition determine our attitude to these things much oftener than our attitude is shaped by our opinions? Hence individual modifications--variations from the general trend, whatever that may be. What a man--or woman--is in worldly relations, isn't he apt to be in regard to religious affairs? If a man thinks for himself in worldly affairs----" "I'm not against thought," he broke in. "That's the eternal misunderstanding!" "But so often against the results of it?" I suggested. "And one reason among others for that is because the result of individual thought is often a decision to suspend generally accepted views in one's own case--which you fellows don't like. I don't mind going so far as to say that I think Miss Driver would be capable of suspending a generally accepted view in her own case--but she wouldn't do it without thought or indifferently. She would do it as a well-considered exercise of power. Some people like power--I don't know whether a priest can understand that?" We had come to the "Church House" where he dwelt in barracks with his curates. His eyes twinkled. "I know what you mean--and you can chaff as much as you like--but I shall have a go at Miss Driver."