"The thing which I dislike about the place is its provincialism," she answered. "It is the most provincial city in America, in the sense that nothing really exists for it outside of itself. If I think of New York for ten minutes I have no longer any faith in America." "Then I shouldn't think of it, Helen," put in Mrs. Fenton. "Then you wouldn't go with your husband if he went there to do this work, I suppose," Mr. Candish observed. "I should go with him anywhere that, he thought it best to go. I fear that you haven't an exalted idea of the devotion of the modern wife, Mr. Candish." Ashe watched with interest the rector, who flushed a little. He knew of him well, having more than once heard the awkwardness and social inadaptability of the man urged as reasons of his unfitness to be placed at the head of the most fashionable church in the city. Philip saw him glance at the hostess and then cast down his eyes; and wondered if this were simple diffidence. "That is hardly fair," Mr. Candish said, somewhat awkwardly. "The clergy, not having wives, are poor judges in such a matter." "That might be taken as an argument for the marriage of the clergy," she responded with a smile. "How so?" "If they had wives they would be better able to sympathize with the trials and joys of their parishioners." "I never thought of that," murmured Mrs. Fenton. Mr. Candish flushed all over his homely, freckled face. "By the same reasoning you might hold that a clergyman should have committed all the sins in the decalogue, so that he should have ready sympathy with all sorts of sinners." "I'm not sure that he wouldn't be more useful if he had," Mrs. Herman answered with a smile; "at least a man who hasn't wanted to commit a sin must find it hard to sympathize with the wretch that hasn't been strong enough to resist temptation. Still, I hope that sin and marriage are not put into the same category." "Oh, of course not," Mrs. Fenton interpolated. "Marriage is a sacrament." "It has always seemed to me inconsistent," Mrs. Herman went on, "that the church should exclude her priests from one of the sacraments." Ashe saw a faint cloud pass over the face of the hostess. He was himself a little shocked; and Candish frowned slightly. "The church admits her priests to this sacrament in a higher sense," he said with some stiffness. Helen smiled. "Now I have shocked you," was her comment. "I beg your pardon." "I can never accustom myself to a familiar way of handling sacred things," he returned. "It is to me too vital a matter." "I am afraid that that is because you are still so young," she retorted. "It is, if you'll pardon me, the prerogative of youth to find all views but its own intolerable." The manner in which this was said deprived the words of their sting, but Mrs. Fenton evidently felt that they were getting upon dangerous ground, and she interposed. "We shall ask you to define youth next, Helen," she threw in.