"It isn't exactly my affair, Maurice," Mrs. Staggchase said, "but I want to know, and that always makes a thing her affair with a woman,--what are you going to do with your life now that you have pulled it out of the mouth of the church?" "It is good of you to care to ask," he answered. "I suppose I shall study law." "May I talk with you quite frankly?" she asked. "Fred does me the honor to say that for a woman I have a reasonably clear head." "You may say whatever you like, Cousin Diana. I shall only be grateful." "Well, then, in the first place, how much have you to live on?" "I've about a thousand dollars a year. What was left of the estate at mother's death amounts to about that. I wanted to give it all to the church when I went into the Clergy House." "Why didn't you?" "Father Frontford wouldn't allow it. He said that a continual sacrifice meant more than an act that stripped me of power to decide, and which might be regretted." "That was a noble temper," Mrs. Staggchase remarked thoughtfully. "A priest is a strange being. As for you, you say you have never believed, and yet you would have given up everything you possessed." Maurice flushed, and looked a little shamefaced. "I never did believe, so far as I can see now; but I thought I did, if you see the difference. My wanting to give up everything wasn't belief; it was a sort of instinctive desire to play fair. If I were to do the thing at all, my impulse was to do it thoroughly. It isn't in my blood to do a thing half way. I'm afraid the explanation doesn't speak very well for my common sense; but so far as I can understand myself that's the way of it." "But if you didn't believe what were you there for?" "I was there because Phil was. I don't pretend to understand why I, who led Phil in everything else, who did all sorts of things that he couldn't and had to decide everything else for him, should have followed his lead so in religion; but I did. It was part of my caring for him. It would have hurt him so much if I hadn't, that of course I had to." Mrs. Staggchase regarded him keenly. He turned away his eyes, thinking of his friend and of the wide gulf which had opened between them, so that he but half heard and did not understand the comment she made softly. "The _ewigweibliche_ in masculine shape," she murmured, smiling to herself. "When the real came, it couldn't hold its power any longer." "What?" he asked. "Nothing. I was speaking in riddles. To come back to business,--you say you've decided upon the law." "Yes. That was always my choice. I read a good deal of law while I was in college. It wasn't till I graduated two years ago that I fell into theology. It's two years wasted." "Oh, perhaps, and perhaps not. After all, experience in youth is generally worth what it costs, little as we think so when we pay the price. Well, then, you can easily live on your income if you choose. Mr. Staggchase and I will be glad to have you make this your home, and"--