Alwyn shrugged his shoulders.  “Faith uprooted by a novel!” he said—­“Alas, poor faith!  It could never have been well established at any time, to be so easy of destruction!  No book in the world, whether of fact or fiction, could persuade me either to or from the consciousness of what my own individual Spirit instinctively knows.  Faith cannot be taught or forced,—­neither, if true, can it be really destroyed,—­it is a God-born, God-fostered intuition, immortal as God Himself.  The ephemeral theories set forth in books should not be able to influence it by so much as a hair’s breadth.”

“Truth is, however, often conveyed through the medium of fiction,”—­observed Dr. Mudley—­“and the novel alluded to was calculated to disturb the mind, and arouse trouble in the heart of many an ardent believer.  It was written by a woman.”

“Nay, then”—­said Alwyn quickly, with a darkening flash in his eyes,—­“if women give up faith, let the world prepare for strange disaster!  Good, God-loving women,—­women who pray,—­women who hope,—­women who inspire men to do the best that is in them,—­ these are the safety and glory of nations!  When women forget to kneel,—­when women cease to teach their children the ‘Our Father,’ by whose grandly simple plea Humanity claims Divinity as its origin,—­then shall we learn what is meant by ’men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.’  A woman who denies Christ repudiates Him, who, above all others, made her sex as free and honored as everywhere in Christendom it is.  He never refused woman’s prayer, —­He had patience for her weakness,—­pardon for her sins,—­and any book written by woman’s hand that does Him the smallest shadow of wrong is to me as gross an act, as that of one who, loaded with benefits, scruples not to murder his benefactor!”

The Duchess de la Santoisie moved uneasily,—­there was a vibration in Alwyn’s voice that went to her very heart.  Strange thoughts swept cloud-like across her mind,—­again she saw in fancy a little fair, dead child that she had loved,—­her only one, on whom she had spent all the tenderness of which her nature was capable.  It had died at the prettiest age of children,—­the age of lisping speech and softly tottering feet, when a journey from the protecting background of a wall to outstretched maternal arms seems fraught with dire peril to the tiny adventurer, and is only undertaken with the help of much coaxing, sweet laughter, and still sweeter kisses.  She remembered how, in spite of her “free” opinions, she had found it impossible not to teach her little one a prayer;—­and a sudden mist of tears blurred her sight, as she recollected the child’s last words,—­words uttered plaintively in the death grasp of a cruel fever, “Suffer me.. to come to Thee!”—­ A quick sigh escaped her lips,—­the diamonds on her breast heaved restlessly,—­lifting her eyes, grown soft with gentle memory, she encountered those of Alwyn, and again she asked herself, could he read her thoughts?  His steadfast gaze seemed to encompass her, and absorb in a grave, compassionate earnestness the entire comprehension of her life.  Her husband’s polite, mellifluous accents roused her from this half-reverie.