“Well—­I have never considered them in that way,” she replied, a little perplexed.

“Do you believe in them yourself?”

“Why—­I don’t know,—­I’ve never thought.  I don’t suppose I do, absolutely—­not in those I have mentioned.”

“And you think it right to teach things to your children which you do not yourself believe?”

“How am I to decide?” she demanded.

“First by finding out yourself what you do believe,” he replied, with a touch of severity.

“Mr. Hodder!” she cried in a scandalized voice, “do you mean to say that I, who have been brought up in this church, do not know what Christianity is.”

He looked at her and shook his head.

“You must begin by being honest with yourself,” he went on, not heeding her shocked expression.  “If you are really in earnest in this matter, I should be glad to help you all I can.  But I warn you there is no achievement in the world more difficult than that of becoming a, Christian.  It means a conversion of your whole being something which you cannot now even imagine.  It means a consuming desire which,—­I fear,—­in consideration of your present mode of life, will be difficult to acquire.”

“My present mode of life!” she gasped.

“Precisely,” said the rector.  He was silent, regarding, her.  There was discernible not the slightest crack of crevice in the enamel of this woman’s worldly armour.

For the moment her outraged feelings were forgotten.  The man had fascinated her.  To be told, in this authoritative manner, that she was wicked was a new and delightful experience.  It brought back to her the real motive of her visit, which had in reality been inspired not only by the sermon of the day before, but by sheer curiosity.

“What would you have me do?” she demanded.

“Find yourself.”

“Do you mean to say that I am not—­myself?” she asked, now completely bewildered.

“I mean to say that you are nobody until you achieve conviction.”

For Charlotte Plimpton, nee Gore, to be told in her own city, by the rector of her own church that she was nobody was an event hitherto inconceivable!  It was perhaps as extraordinary that she did not resent. it.  Curiosity still led her on.

“Conviction?” she repeated.  “But I have conviction, Mr. Hodder.  I believe in the doctrines of the Church.”

“Belief!” he exclaimed, and checked himself strongly.  “Conviction through feeling.  Not until then will you find what you were put in the world for.”

“But my husband—­my children?  I try to do my duty.”

“You must get a larger conception of it,” Hodder replied.

“I suppose you mean,” she declared, “that I am to spend the rest of my life in charity.”

“How you would spend the rest of your life would be revealed to you,” said the rector.

It was the weariness in his tone that piqued her now, the intimation that he did not believe in her sincerity—­had not believed in it from the first.  The life-long vanity of a woman used to be treated with consideration, to be taken seriously, was aroused.  This extraordinary man had refused to enter into the details which she inquisitively craved.