“If Mr. Hazard says I must, I shall do so with pleasure,” replied Catherine with her best company manners; and the Reverend Mr. Hazard, having been taken into Esther’s confidence on the subject, decided, after reflection, that Miss Brooke’s moral nature would not be hurt by reading Dickens under such circumstances; so the next day Catherine was plunged into a new world of imagination which so absorbed her thoughts that for the time Wharton himself seemed common-place.  High on her scaffolding which looked sheer down into the empty, echoing church, with huge saints and evangelists staring at her from every side, and martyrs admiring each other’s beatitude, Catherine, who was already half inclined to think life unreal, fell into a dream within a dream, and wondered which was untrue.

Esther’s anxiety about Catherine was for the time put at rest by the professor’s little maneuver, but she had some rather more serious cause for disquiet about herself, in regard to which she did not care to consult her cousin or any one else.  Wharton and Strong were not the only men who undertook to enliven her path of professional labor.  Every day at noon, the Reverend Stephen Hazard visited his church to see how Wharton was coming forward, and this clerical duty was not neglected after Esther joined the work-people.  Much as Mr. Hazard had to do, and few men in New York were busier, he never forgot to look in for a moment on the artists, and Esther could not help noticing that this moment tended to lengthen.  He had a way of joining Wharton and Catherine on their tour of inspection, and then bringing Catherine back to Esther’s work-place, and sitting down for an instant to rest and look at the St. Cecilia.  Time passed rapidly, and once or twice it had come over Esther’s mind that, for a very busy man, Mr. Hazard seemed to waste a great deal of time.  It grew to be a regular habit that between noon and one o’clock, Esther and Catherine entertained the clergyman of the parish.

The strain of standing in a pulpit is great.  No human being ever yet constructed was strong enough to offer himself long as a light to humanity without showing the effect on his constitution.  Buddhist saints stand for years silent, on one leg, or with arms raised above their heads, but the limbs shrivel, and the mind shrivels with the limbs.  Christian saints have found it necessary from time to time to drop their arms and to walk on their legs, but they do it with a sort of apology or defiance, and sometimes do it, if they can, by stealth.  One is a saint or one is not; every man can choose the career that suits him; but to be saint and sinner at the same time requires singular ingenuity.  For this reason, wise clergymen, whose tastes, though in themselves innocent, may give scandal to others, enjoy their relaxation, so far as they can, in privacy.  Mr. Hazard liked the society of clever men and agreeable women; he was bound to keep an eye on the progress of his own church; he stepped not an inch outside the range of his clerical duty and privilege; yet ill-natured persons, and there were such in his parish, might say that he was carrying on a secular flirtation in his own church under the pretense of doing his duty.  Perhaps he felt the risk of running into this peril.  He invited no public attention to the manner in which he passed this part of his time, and never alluded to the subject in other company.