Catherine Sirrett's mother was an intensely, even a morbidly, religious woman. Her father was an atheist and an aesthete. Yet her parents were fond of each other at first and made common cause in spoiling their only child. Sometimes the mother would whisper in the little girl's ear that she must pray for poor father who was blind to the true light and deaf to the beautiful voice. Sometimes the father would tell her that if she would worship she must worship genius, the poet, the painter, the musician; that if she would pray she must pray to Nature, the sea, the sunset and the spring-time. But as a rule these two loving antagonists thought it was enough for their baby, their treasure, to develop quietly, steadily, in an atmosphere of adoration, in which arose no mist of theories, no war of words. Till she was ten years old Catherine was untroubled. At that age a parental contest began to rage--at first furtively,--about her. With the years her mother's morbidity waxed, her father's restraint waned. The one became more intensely and frantically devout, the other more frankly pagan. And now, as the child grew, and her mind and heart stood up to meet life and girlhood, each of her parents began to feel towards her the desire of sole possession. She had been brought up a Christian. The father had permitted that. So long as she was an ignorant infant he had felt no anxiety to attach her to his theories. But when he saw the intelligence growing in her eyes, the dawn of her soul deepening, there stirred within him a strong desire that she should face existence as he faced it, free from trammels of superstition. The mother, with the quick intuition of woman, soon understood his unexpressed feeling and thrilled with religious fear. Although--or indeed because--she loved her husband so much she was tortured by his lack of faith. And now she was alarmed at the thought of the effect his influence might have upon Catherine. She was roused to an intense activity of the soul. She said nothing to her husband of her fear and horror. He said nothing to her of his secret determination that his only child should grow up in his own faithless faith. But a silent and determined battle began to rage between them for the possession of Catherine's soul. And, at last, this battle turned the former love of the parents into a sort of uneasy hatred. The child did not fully comprehend what was going on around her, but she dimly felt it. And it influenced her whole nature.