"Don't begin by making that an article of faith," he returned promptly. "To set up for being a good man is the last thing I would dream of. Like other men, I am good as far as I was born and have been made so, and neither more nor less. All I can take credit for on my own account is that I try to live up to the light that has been given me." "What can anyone do more?" she said, eagerly. "It is better than believing at haphazard and not trying at all--which is what so many good people are content with." "It seems better to me," he said. "I will trust you--I will trust you," she went on, leaning towards him as he sat beside her. "You are doing more good in the world than I had even thought of until I knew you. It is I who will not be up to the mark--not you. But I will help you as much as you will let me--I am going to give my life to helping you. And at least--at least--you believe in God," she concluded, yearning for some tangible and definite evidence of faith, as she had understood faith, wherewith to comfort her conscientious soul. "We are together in _that_--the chief thing of all--are we not?" He was a scrupulously truthful man, and he hesitated for a moment. "Yes, my dear," he said, gravely. "I believe in God--that is to say, I _feel_ Him--I lean my littleness on a greatness that I know is all around me and upholding me, which is Something that even God seems a word too mean for. I think," he added, "that God, to me, is not what He has been taught to seem to you." "Never mind," she said, in a low voice, responding to the spirit rather than the letter of his words. "Whatever you believe you are sure to believe thoroughly, and if you believe in God, your God must be a true God. I feel it, though I don't know it." "You feel that things will all come right for us if we have faith in our own hearts, and love and trust each other. So do I, Elizabeth." There was nobody looking, and he put his arm round her shoulder for a moment. "And we may consider our religious controversy closed then? We need not trouble ourselves about that any more?" "I would not say 'closed.' Don't you think we ought to talk of _all_ our thoughts--and especially those that trouble us--to each other?" "I do--I do, indeed. And so we shall. Ours is going to be a real marriage. We shall be, not two, but one. Only for the present we may put this topic aside, as being no longer an obstruction in the way of our arrangements, mayn't we?" "Yes," she said. And the die was cast. "Very well, then." He seemed to pull himself together at this point, and into his fine frame and his vigorous face a new energy was infused, the force of which seemed to be communicated to the air around her, and made her heart beat more strongly to the quicker pulse of his. "Very well, then. Now tell me, Elizabeth--without any formality, while you and I are here together--when shall we be married?"