Perhaps your leniency may have the same effect! At any rate, Fred, whatever may be his ultimate fate, don’t _you_ have a hand in it! _Don’t_, for the sake of the old days!’ The tears were standing in her bright eyes as she leaned across the table and put her hand upon his arm. He placed his own hand over it. ‘Were the old days very dear to you, Rhoda?’ he asked. ‘You know they were, but it is of no use talking of it. Since your lot in life is fixed, it would be foolish to revert to the time when you thought otherwise from now. I hear your voice, and fancy I have got my old friend again, but, when I look at you, dressed in that strange manner, and with your beautiful brown hair cropped off, I can hardly believe you are the same Fred I knew. And it is best so, is it not?’ ‘But what I am afraid of, Rhoda, is that my face and clothes are the only things that are changed about me. That is one thing I wanted to talk to you about. I fear I have made a terrible mistake in becoming a priest. You see, this time last year, I was so mad with grief, the shock I experienced had so shattered my nerves, that I was not myself. All I wanted was to find forgetfulness, even at the sacrifice of worldly good. My friends and relations worked largely on my frame of mind, by assuring me the peace I longed for was to be found only in the Church. My mother and godfather had intended me for that profession, and I was in too despondent a state of mind to care what they did with me, or made of me. So I drifted into ordination, not from a love of God, but of despairing grief for my great loss. And now, I am sure, I am unfitted for it. I am not nearly good enough. My thoughts and desires are all with the world I have left. I have no vocation for the ministry. What am I to do? Tell me, Rhoda. I have faith in your sincerity and purity of teaching. Don’t consider anything, except how I can please Heaven best. I don’t want to please myself so much, as not to disgrace my calling.’ ‘If you ask my advice, Fred, I can only give it in the words of your favourite Shakespeare:-- “To thine own self, be true! It follows, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”’ ‘Be true to myself!’ mused Frederick Walcheren. ‘Yes, Rhoda, you are right! That must be the only true test of any man’s conduct.’ ‘Be true to the divinity that is in you, Fred. If _you_ feel--if your soul--your very self feels that you will live an honester and better life by leaving the Church--a life nearer God, and more in accordance with the nature which He has given you--then don’t go by what any priest, or Church, or law says, but be a law to yourself--and act like not only a Christian, but _a man_, with free thoughts, and free aspirations, and a God-given right to regulate his own life as he may see best for himself and others.’