"And perhaps," he added, "if I had always lived up to the highest ideals of life, I might now be worthy of you. I am unworthy, I confess it."
"Oh, don't put it that way," she said in distress. "Let it be that I am not worthy of the love you offer me, not capable of loving enough to—to—marry."
"Miss Bright, you are capable of loving, as few women are. It is my misfortune that I have not won your love. I need you to help me live my highest and best. All these months, because of your unconscious influence, I have been learning to see myself as I am, and as I might be. For the first time in my life, I have come in contact with a deeply religious soul, and have felt myself struggling towards the light. I have wrestled with doubt, again and again, bewildered. You teach us that the founder of the Christian religion had compassion on sinful men."
"Yes."
"But you have no compassion on me."
"You misunderstand," she said. "You see it sometimes happens that there is little real happiness, real union, where the wife is a believer in God, and the husband seeks—"
"The devil," supplemented Kenneth. "I confess I have followed the devil to some extent."
"Don't," she said. "It hurts me to the heart to hear you speak so. I meant to say if he had no sympathy with her spiritual life."
"If I were a professing Christian, do you think you would care more for me?"
"I might."