"I am a good churchwoman, but I am not able to believe in scoring off the sins of the soul by abusing the body. The old monks scourging themselves and the Hindus swinging by hooks in their backs seem to me both pathetically mistaken, and both to be moved by the same feelings."
"Then you do not believe in asceticism at all?"
"Mr. Fenton used to say that asceticism was the most insolent insult to
Heaven that human vanity ever invented."
"But if we are to follow the devices and desires of our own hearts," Ashe broke out, his inner excitement bursting forth through his calmness, "if we are to give way to the joys of this life, if—Do you not see, Mrs. Fenton, that this covers so much? It goes down into the depths of a man's heart. It comes almost at once, for instance, to the question of the marriage of priests."
She flushed, and her manner grew perceptibly colder.
"That is naturally not a subject that I care to go into," she said; "but I have no scruple against saying that I do not believe in a celibate priesthood. In our church and our time, it is out of place."
"But it is the supreme test whether a man is willing to give up all his earthly joy for the service of Heaven."
She frowned slightly, and he realized how significant his manner must have been.
"The marriage of the clergy is not a subject that it seems to me necessary for us to discuss," she said.
"Mrs. Fenton," Philip said, "I have given you too good a right to be offended with me once, but I must say something that I fear may offend you again. It is not about myself. It is about a better man."