"
She left her place behind the tea-table and came nearer to him, sitting
directly before the fire. The light fell on her convincing face and on
her wavy hair. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him.
"Well?" she said.
"I do not know how to say it," Philip responded slowly. "I am afraid
that you have not much sympathy with my views of life."
"I probably have more than you realize. It's true that I do not believe
as you do, but we are both Puritans at heart, so that in the end our
theories come to much the same thing."
He looked up with evident inability to follow her meaning.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Very likely I couldn't make myself clear if I tried to explain.
Suppose we give up abstractions and come to the concrete. What is the
especial thing in which you think that my theories are different from
yours?"
"I do not think," he answered, hesitating more than ever, "that you
have much sympathy with asceticism."
"None whatever," she declared uncompromisingly. "Nobody could have more
honor for a sacrifice to principle than I have; but I believe that a
sacrifice to an idea is apt to be the outcome of nothing but vanity or
policy.
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