"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. It was part of my caring for him. It would have hurt him so much if I hadn't, that of course I had to."
Mrs. Staggchase regarded him keenly. He turned away his eyes, thinking of his friend and of the wide gulf which had opened between them, so that he but half heard and did not understand the comment she made softly.
"The ewigweibliche in masculine shape," she murmured, smiling to herself. "When the real came, it couldn't hold its power any longer."
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing. I was speaking in riddles. To come back to business,—you say you've decided upon the law."