"But, if your choice is not a wise one?"
She turned upon him fiercely.
"Who are you to judge? And is your own choice so wise? Your own choices, rather, for, if I remember clearly, there have been a number of them. And what good have they done to any man?"
"Too little good, Katharine," Brenton assented humbly. "At least, though, they have done no harm."
"How do you know that?" she taunted him defiantly. "How is any man to know the harm he can do by a wrong belief? No; I don't mean the harm you may have done to yourself. That is superficial. You can cure it easily; there are dozens of mental plasters that you can apply." Her voice grew yet more scornful on the phrase. "But what about the harm to other people? What about the harm to me from all your theological shilly-shally? The only wonder of it all is that I was given the strength to come out of it and into something better. And now—"
Brenton stayed her torrent of words by the very quiet of his brief question.
"Now, Katharine?"
"Now I demand my right to go out and make what I can of the little you have left me of my life."
"In what way?"
His quiet interrogations pierced her excitement as no opposition could have done. Her next reply, when it came, was almost devoid of passion.