If Isabel had been impulsive, she would have accepted at once, under the influence of his presence.  But she had a wise, practical way of taking time to think.  She endeavored to eliminate entirely the element of feeling, and see the offer in the light in which it would show itself after present circumstances had passed.  For if Lurton had been a crafty man, he could not have offered himself at a moment more opportune.  Isa was now homeless, and without a future.  If you ask me why, then, she did not accept Lurton without hesitation, I answer that I can no more explain this than I can explain all the other paradoxes of love that I see every day.  Was it that he was too perfect?  Is it easier for a woman to love a man than a model?  People are not apt to be enamored of monotony, even of a monotony of goodness.  Was it, then, that Isa would have liked a man whose soul had been a battle-field, rather than one in whom goodness and faith had had an easy time?  Did she feel more sympathy for one who had fought and overcome, like Charlton, than for one who had never known a great struggle?  Perhaps I have not touched at all upon the real reason for Isa’s hesitation.  But she certainly did hesitate.  She found it quite impossible to analyze her own feelings in the matter.  The more she thought about it, the more hopeless her confusion became.

It is one of the unhappy results produced by some works of religious biography, that people who copy methods, are prone to copy those not adapted to their own peculiarities.  Isabel, in her extremity of indecision, remembered that some saint of the latter part of the last century, whose biography she had read in a Sunday-school library-book, was wont, when undecided in weighty matters, to write down all the reasons, pro and con, and cipher out a conclusion by striking a logical balance.  It naturally occurred to Isa that what so good and wise a person had found beneficial, might also prove an assistance to her.  So she wrote down the following: 

“REASONS IN FAVOR.

“1.  Mr. Lurton is one of the most excellent men in the world.  I have a very great respect and a sincere regard for him.  If he were my husband, I do not think I should ever find anything to prevent me loving him.

“2.  The life of a minister’s wife would open to me opportunities to do good.  I could at least encourage and sustain him.

“3.  It seems to be providential that the offer should come at this time, when I am free from all obligations that would interfere with it, and when I seem to have no other prospect.

“REASONS AGAINST.

“1.”—­