He can't help
looking at religion as an end rather than a means."
"Has it ever struck you that he might finish by going over to the
Catholics?"
"No," she answered, "I confess I'd never thought of it; but I see what
you mean."
"It will seem to him a moral catastrophe, a sort of ecclesiastical
cataclysm," Maurice continued, "if Father Frontford isn't elected; and
as far as I can judge there isn't much chance of that."
"No," she assented, "I don't think there is much chance."
"He said to me one day," added Maurice thoughtfully, "that in the
Catholic Church there never could have been any danger of the election
of a heretic bishop. I am afraid this will decide him."
Mrs. Herman regarded him with a smile, studying him as if she were
reading the working of his mind.
"You think that a misfortune," she commented. "You feel that it is a
step farther into the darkness."
"It is to narrow rather than to broaden his horizon, is it not?"
She played with her fan a moment, smiling to herself in a way which he
did not understand, and looking down as if considering some old memory.
Then she met his glance with a look at once kind and wistful.
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