"But do you mean not to try to—Oh, Phil, doesn't it ever come to you that all this monkish business is a mistake? We were a couple of foolish boys that didn't know what we were about when we went into it; and"—
Ashe turned and looked at him with eyes full of reproach, and of almost despairing determination.
"Is that the way you help me?" he asked.
Maurice drew a long, deep breath, and set his strong jaw with a resolve not to abandon so easily the endeavor to bring his friend out of his trouble. It hardly occurred to him for the moment that it was his own cause that he was defending.
"Phil," he persisted, "isn't it possible that after all we may be wrong in making ourselves wiser than the church by taking vows that are not required?"
"Do you suppose that the devil has forgotten to say that to me over and over again?" was the response.
"Meaning that I am the old gentleman?" Maurice retorted, trying to be lightsome.
"Oh, don't joke. I can't stand it. I've been through so much, and this is so terrible a thing to bear anyway."
Wynne seized his rosary with one hand, and struck it across the other so hard that the corner of the crucifix wounded his finger.
"Phil, old fellow," he said gravely, "I never felt less like joking. It cuts me to the quick to see you suffer; and I know how hard you will take this. I know what it is, for I'm going through the same thing myself, and I've about made up my mind that we are wrong. I begin to think that celibacy is only a device that the early church somehow got into when it was necessary to hold complete authority over the priest, or when men thought that it was. It belongs to the Middle Ages; not to the nineteenth century."