He was somewhat younger than Mrs.
Fenton; and Helen was not without the thought that this passion might
be on his part no more than the inevitable result of his coming in
contact with a beautiful woman after having been immured in the
monastic seclusion of the Clergy House; a passion which would pass with
a wider acquaintance with the world. The whole matter perplexed and
troubled her, and yet she earnestly longed to help her cousin.
"Dear Philip," she said, "I can't tell you how I enter into your
feeling. I don't agree with you, but we are not so far apart in
temperament, if we are in doctrine. I'm afraid that you'll think that
I'm merely tempting you when I say that it seems to me that your
conscientiousness is entirely right, and that your conviction is all
wrong."
"Of course I know that you do not hold the same faith that I do."
"But one of your own faith might remind you that your own church
upholds the marriage of the clergy."
"Yes," he assented with apparent unwillingness, "but my conscience does
not."
"Do you mean that you find your conscience a better guide than the
church? That seems to put you on my ground, after all.
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