"
"Why didn't you?"
"Father Frontford wouldn't allow it. He said that a continual sacrifice
meant more than an act that stripped me of power to decide, and which
might be regretted."
"That was a noble temper," Mrs. Staggchase remarked thoughtfully. "A
priest is a strange being. As for you, you say you have never believed,
and yet you would have given up everything you possessed."
Maurice flushed, and looked a little shamefaced.
"I never did believe, so far as I can see now; but I thought I did, if
you see the difference. My wanting to give up everything wasn't belief;
it was a sort of instinctive desire to play fair. If I were to do the
thing at all, my impulse was to do it thoroughly. It isn't in my blood
to do a thing half way. I'm afraid the explanation doesn't speak very
well for my common sense; but so far as I can understand myself that's
the way of it."
"But if you didn't believe what were you there for?"
"I was there because Phil was. I don't pretend to understand why I, who
led Phil in everything else, who did all sorts of things that he
couldn't and had to decide everything else for him, should have
followed his lead so in religion; but I did.
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