The champion of the papacy smiled. “You are too hard on our poor Candidate, Vennie. There’s more of the sheep than the wolf about our worthy Wone, after all. But you touch upon a large question, my dear; a large question. That great circle, whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere, as St. Thomas says, must needs include many ways to the fulfilment of His ends, which are mysterious to us. God is sometimes pleased to use the machinations of the most evil men, even their sensual passions, and their abominable vices, to bring about the fulfilment of His will. And we, dear child,” he added after a pause, “must follow God’s methods. That is why the church has always condemned as a dangerous heresy that Tolstoyan doctrine of submission to evil. We must never submit to evil! Our duty is to use against it every weapon the world offers. Weapons that in themselves are unholy, become holy--nay! even sacred--when used in the cause of God and His church.” Vennie remained puzzled and silent. She felt a vague, remote dissatisfaction with her friend’s argument; but she found it difficult to answer. She glanced sadly up at the cone-shaped mount above them, and wished that in place of that heathen-looking tower, she could see her angel with the silver sword. “It is all very confusing,” she murmured at last, “and I shall be glad when I am out of it.” The theologian laid his hand--the hand that ought to have belonged to a prince of the church--upon his companion’s. “You will be out of it soon, child,” he said, “and then you will help us by your prayers. We who are the temporal monks of the great struggle are bound to soil our hands in the dust of the arena. But your prayers, and the prayers of many like you, cleanse them continually from such unhappy stains.” Even at the moment he was uttering these profound words, Mr. Taxater was wondering in his heart how far his friend’s inclination to a convent depended upon an impulse much more natural and feminine than the desire to avoid the Mr. Romers and Mr. Wones of this poor world. He made a second rather brutal experiment. “We must renounce,” he said, “all these plausible poetic attempts to be wiser than God’s Holy Church. That is one of the faults into which our worthy Clavering falls.” Once more the tell-tale scarlet rushed into the cheeks of Nevilton’s little nun. “Yes,” she answered, stooping to pluck a spray of wild basil, “I know.”