"I do not think I follow you; but surely self-denial is a sacrifice to principle."
"Not necessarily. I'm afraid I may seem to you profane, Philip, but I must say that it seems to me that asceticism is one of the worst plague-spots which ever afflicted humanity. The root of it is the pagan idea of propitiating a cruel deity by self-torture."
"How can you say so!" he cried. "It is the pure devotion of a man to the good of his higher nature and to the good of the race."
"As far as the race goes, vicarious suffering can't be anything, so far as I see, except an effort to placate an unforgiving deity. As for the devotion of a man to his higher nature, you will never convince me that to go against nature and to indulge in morbidness is improving to anything. But here we are, swamped in a bog of great moral propositions again. We can't agree about these things, and the thing which we really want to say will be lost sight of entirely."
He turned his face away from her again, either troubled by what she had been saying or unable to find words and confidence to go on with the confession of his trouble.
"Is it," Helen inquired, "that you have found that you have yourself a doubt of the value of asceticism?"
"No, not that," he answered, dropping his voice; "but—but I begin to doubt myself."
She leaned forward in her chair. Some power outside of her own will seemed to constrain her.
"Philip," she said, bending over and touching his hand, "has love made you doubt?"
The question evidently took him entirely by surprise. She wondered what impulse had made her speak and how her question would affect him. He flushed to his forehead, and cast at her a look so full of pathetic appeal that she felt the tears come into her eyes. It was the look of a hunted creature which sees no way of escape, yet which has not the fury of resistance, which pleads its own weakness. She knew that Philip could not equivocate and that the secret of his heart lay bare before her. She shrank from what she had done, and a flood of pity and sympathy filled her mind.