"Phil, old fellow," he said gravely, "I never felt less like joking. It
cuts me to the quick to see you suffer; and I know how hard you will
take this. I know what it is, for I'm going through the same thing
myself, and I've about made up my mind that we are wrong. I begin to
think that celibacy is only a device that the early church somehow got
into when it was necessary to hold complete authority over the priest,
or when men thought that it was. It belongs to the Middle Ages; not to
the nineteenth century."
"Then you don't see how marriage would be sure to interfere with a
man's zeal for his work?"
"But it would certainly bring him into closer sympathy with humanity."
Ashe shook his head.
"You don't seem to realize," he said with a certain doggedness which
Wynne had seldom seen in him, "how it must absorb a man, and take
possession of his very reason. Why, see me. I know it is a sin to think
of her, and yet"--He broke off and choked. "Besides," he resumed
presently, "you say yourself that you feel as I do, and that means that
you are not looking at the thing fairly. You are trying to make your
conscience come round to the side of your desires.
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