subjection to man.  Our own Church has quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at the fine consistency of the Church of Rome.  As truly as you live, the Catholic Church will one day hold the only women who subject themselves to their husbands in all things because of God’s command—­regardless of their anarchistic desire to ‘please themselves.’  There is the only Christian Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled with an iron hand—­and has the courage to send them to hell for ’pleasing themselves.’”

He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst of confidence, continued: 

“This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have more than once questioned if I should always allow the Anglo-Catholic Church to modify my true Catholicism.  I have talked freely with Father Riley of St. Clements at our weekly ministers’ meetings—­there’s a bright chap for you—­and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, the Church of Rome has about the only claim worth considering.  Mind you, this is not to be repeated, but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back on my simple childish faith in the love of the Father earned of him for me by the Son’s death on the cross.  But what if I err in making my faith too simple?  Even now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense.  Doubts like these are tragedies to an honest man, Aunt Bell—­they try his soul—­they bring him each day to the foot of that cross whereon the Son of God suffers his agony in order to ransom our souls from God’s wrath with us—­and there are times, Aunt Bell, when I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open arms of the mother Church—­on whose loving bosom of authority a man may lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind.”

Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.

“After all,” she said briskly, “isn’t Christianity the most fascinating of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief?  Isn’t it fine, Allan—­doesn’t the very thought excite you—­that not only the souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual values—­and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions.  How truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!”

The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this bald wording of his responsibility; then he sighed and bent his head as one honestly conscious of the situation’s gravity.

CHAPTER X

THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON

It was not a jest—­Nancy’s telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself.  At least such reticence to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner woman.  Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a secret began to tell itself:  at first in whispers, then low like a voice overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could hear them.