“Oh, no,” she cried.  “You would have done it anyway.”

He paused a moment, to get himself in hand.

“For this reason, I owed it to you to speak—­to thank you.  I have realized, since that first meeting, that you became my friend then, and that you spoke as a friend.  If you had not believed in my sincerity, you would not have spoken.  I wish you to know that I am fully aware and grateful for the honour you did me, and that I realize it is not always easy for you to speak so—­to any one.”

She did not reply.

“There is another reason for my telling you now of this decision of mine to remain a clergyman,” he continued.  “It is because I value your respect and friendship, and I hope you will believe that I would not take this course unless I saw my way clear to do it with sincerity.”

“One has only to look at you to see that you are sincere,” she said gently, with a thrill in her voice that almost unmanned him.  “I told you once that I should never have forgiven myself if I had wrecked your life.  I meant it.  I am very glad.”

It was his turn to be silent.

“Just because I cannot see how it would be possible to remain in the Church after one had been—­emancipated, so to speak,”—­she smiled at him,—­“is no reason why you may not have solved the problem.”

Such was the superfine quality of her honesty.  Yet she trusted him!  He was made giddy by a desire, which he fought down, to justify himself before her.  His eye beheld her now as the goddess with the scales in her hand, weighing and accepting with outward calm the verdict of the balance . . . .  Outward calm, but inner fire.

“It makes no difference,” she pursued evenly, bent on choosing her words, “that I cannot personally understand your emancipation, that mine is different.  I can only see the preponderance of evil, of deception, of injustice—­it is that which shuts out everything else.  And it’s temperamental, I suppose.  By looking at you, as I told you, I can see that your emancipation is positive, while mine remains negative.  You have somehow regained a conviction that the good is predominant, that there is some purpose in the universe.”

He assented.  Once more she relapsed into thought, while he sat contemplating her profile.  She turned to him again with a tremulous smile.

“But isn’t a conviction that the good is predominant, that there is a purpose in the universe, a long way from the positive assertions in the Creeds?” she asked.  “I remember, when I went through what you would probably call disintegration, and which seemed to me enlightenment, that the Creeds were my first stumbling-blocks.  It seemed wrong to repeat them.”