"
"You could not be," was his reply; "but I do not understand what you
mean."
She had grown graver, and leaned back in her chair with downcast eyes.
"I hardly know how to say it," she began slowly, "but you seem to me to
be feeling rather morbidly about the virtue of personal discomfort. If
you will pardon me, I can't think that you really believe it to be any
merit in the sight of heaven that a man should make himself needlessly
uncomfortable."
"But if the mortification of the flesh helps us to"--
She put up her hand and interrupted him.
"I am a good churchwoman, but I am not able to believe in scoring off
the sins of the soul by abusing the body. The old monks scourging
themselves and the Hindus swinging by hooks in their backs seem to me
both pathetically mistaken, and both to be moved by the same feelings."
"Then you do not believe in asceticism at all?"
"Mr. Fenton used to say that asceticism was the most insolent insult to
Heaven that human vanity ever invented."
"But if we are to follow the devices and desires of our own hearts,"
Ashe broke out, his inner excitement bursting forth through his
calmness, "if we are to give way to the joys of this life, if--Do you
not see, Mrs.
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