"Maurice," she said, "you have thrown down the gauntlet which, were I to take up in like spirit, would result in wounding both our hearts even as you have wounded mine. Were I to reply to you as you have spoken to me, I think this power of Christ about which we disagree would prove singularly lacking in both our hearts. I came here to talk to you about the new belief that has come into my life; but can one talk of the heart's sacred joy, the deep, hidden things of God before a stern and unsympathetic judge? All I ask now is that you grant me the freedom of religious thought that you demand as your inalienable right."
Now Mr. Thorpe was aware that a woman he had never known stood before him, and he also knew that in purity of thought and in her sense of justice, in Christ-likeness, she towered above him. Heretofore she had bent to his will so readily that he scarcely knew how thoroughly he dominated her. Now she stood before him asking and demanding freedom of thought, independence in her religious belief--even that for which their forefathers had fought. And this was Evelyn, his wife, not crushed by his scathing condemnation, but triumphant in her sweet humility, and mistress of the situation.
There was silence between them for a few moments, then Mrs. Thorpe laid her hand on her husband's shoulder. She knew that her thrust had gone straight to the mark and her heart ached with the pain she had inflicted.
"Maurice," she said, "I would not willingly incur your disfavor, much less cause you pain."
There was a tremor in her voice that threatened tears; but her husband remained motionless and irresponsive.
"Can our conceptions of God come between us, Maurice--alienate us---when we have been so much to each other?" Her voice choked and she felt that her heart was breaking.
"I cannot understand, Evelyn," Mr. Thorpe said, in a voice that had lost its harshness and was broken and unsteady, "how anything so visionary, so fallacious, so palpably false, can have taken so strong a hold upon you. What is it that has diverted your allegiance from the church--the church of Christ?"
"Maurice, there is no command given for the observance of God's laws but I most humbly reverence and endeavor to obey. All that to me seems good and true in church and creed I hold and keep, but this I will say, that the conception that I now have of spiritual things is deeper, stronger, mightier than the old, as the ocean is mightier than the rivulet. I do not condemn the church, but I must have more than it has ever given me. I believe that Christ loves sick and sinful humanity to-day as he loved it when he walked the earth healing all manner of evil and error."
"Evelyn, it is the heretical books that you have read that have blinded you and caused you to put a false interpretation on the works of Christ. Can you not see that when Christ came to earth and men were slow to acknowledge Him that it was necessary for Him to give to the world some evidence incontrovertible, irrefutable, that He was of divine origin? To establish this fact beyond all doubt and question He chose a most miraculous expedient: he healed the sick, cast out devils, raised the dead. And now, even in this wicked and degenerate age, these mortals whom He came to save claim the power to do these works that He did. To say nothing of the absurdity of the thing, I little believed you capable of accepting so blasphemous a fallacy."
Mrs. Thorpe turned and walked to the window, and her eyes followed the incline that led up to the church.