Celia regarded him with gravity.  “You will get yourself into great trouble, my friend,” she said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” put in Theron.  “Not that I’d mind any trouble in this wide world, so long as you called me ‘my friend,’ but I’m not going to get into any at all.  I know a trick worth two of that.  I’ve learned to be a showman.  I can preach now far better than I used to, and I can get through my work in half the time, and keep on the right side of my people, and get along with perfect smoothness.  I was too green before.  I took the thing seriously, and I let every mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fanatic worry me, and keep me on pins and needles.  I don’t do that any more.  I’ve taken a new measure of life.  I see now what life is really worth, and I’m going to have my share of it.  Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible happiness for the rest of my days, simply because I made a fool of myself when I was in my teens?  Other men are not eternally punished like that, for what they did as boys, and I won’t submit to it either.  I will be as free to enjoy myself as—­as Father Forbes.”

Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again.  “Poor man, to call him free!” she said:  “why, he is bound hand and foot.  You don’t in the least realize how he is hedged about, the work he has to do, the thousand suspicious eyes that watch his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop down upon him.  And then think of his sacrifice—­the great sacrifice of all—­to never know what love means, to forswear his manhood, to live a forlorn, celibate life—­you have no idea how sadly that appeals to a woman.”

“Let us sit down here for a little,” said Theron; “we seem at the end of the path.”  She seated herself on the root-based mound, and he reclined at her side, with an arm carelessly extended behind her on the moss.

“I can see what you mean,” he went on, after a pause.  “But to me, do you know, there is an enormous fascination in celibacy.  You forget that I know the reverse of the medal.  I know how the mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence darkened and belittled, by—­by the other thing.  I have never talked to you before about my marriage.”

“I don’t think we’d better talk about it now,” observed Celia.  “There must be many more amusing topics.”

He missed the spirit of her remark.  “You are right,” he said slowly.  “It is too sad a thing to talk about.  But there! it is my load, and I bear it, and there’s nothing more to be said.”

Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge of Celia’s penumbra of apparel.

“No,” she said.  “We mustn’t snivel, and we mustn’t sulk.  When I get into a rage it makes me ill, and I storm my way through it and tear things, but it doesn’t last long, and I come out of it feeling all the better.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen your wife.  I suppose she hasn’t got red hair?”