"Not even to God?"
"Speaking through you?"
"Through my office—yes."
"Aye, there's the rub! Besides—well, I can't discuss her from a moral point of view; any information I may have seems somehow to have been acquired confidentially."
"That's quite right, Austin."
"I'll only put before you a general suggestion. Doesn't our disposition determine our attitude to these things much oftener than our attitude is shaped by our opinions? Hence individual modifications—variations from the general trend, whatever that may be. What a man—or woman—is in worldly relations, isn't he apt to be in regard to religious affairs? If a man thinks for himself in worldly affairs——"
"I'm not against thought," he broke in. "That's the eternal misunderstanding!"
"But so often against the results of it?" I suggested. "And one reason among others for that is because the result of individual thought is often a decision to suspend generally accepted views in one's own case—which you fellows don't like. I don't mind going so far as to say that I think Miss Driver would be capable of suspending a generally accepted view in her own case—but she wouldn't do it without thought or indifferently. She would do it as a well-considered exercise of power. Some people like power—I don't know whether a priest can understand that?"
We had come to the "Church House" where he dwelt in barracks with his curates. His eyes twinkled. "I know what you mean—and you can chaff as much as you like—but I shall have a go at Miss Driver."
After a conversation a man of candid mind will often—and, if the discussion has partaken in any degree of an argumentative character, I would say generally—he left reflecting whether what he has said was even as true as he meant to make it. As I had hinted, I talked to Alison about Jenny with reserves, but even within their limits I doubted whether I had given him the impression I had meant to convey. Perhaps he understood, though he could never acknowledge as legitimate, my view that she would feel entitled to treat herself as a special case. He might even act on this view—always without acknowledging it; surely Churches have been known to do that? He might approach her on that footing—with the hope of changing it. I had meant to point out an impossibility; I fancied I had indicated a task and communicated a stimulus. Had I cast aside the reserves, I should have told him plainly that in my judgment the emotional basis for his appeal was lacking in her. Emotions existed, but not in that direction; that was more what I had wanted to say, but, not feeling at liberty to adduce evidence, I had lost myself in generalities. My poor modicum of truth stopped at the dictum that to Jenny Jenny would seem an exceptional person; I had at least come near to putting it in the hazardous and unorthodox form that everybody might have a right, on sufficient occasion, so to treat himself. And he himself judge of the sufficiency of the occasion? That amounts to anarchy—as Alison, of course, perceived, and, had we pursued the argument, I must have found myself in a very tight place.