Mr. Gwynne began, speaking quietly, even humbly. “When I was a youth studying for the Church, doubts came upon my mind, as they will upon most young minds whose strivings after truth are hedged in by a thorny rampart of old worn-out forms. Then there came a sudden crisis in my life; I must either enter on a ministry in whose creed I only half believed, or let my mother—my noble, self-denying mother—starve. You know her, Miss Rothesay, though you know not half that she is, and ever was to me. But you do know what it is to have a beloved mother.”
“Yes.”
Infidel as he was, she could have clung to Harold Gwynne, and called him brother.
“Well, after a time of great inward conflict, I decided—for her sake. Though little more than a boy in years, struggling in a chaos of mingled doubt and faith, I bound myself to believe whatever the Church taught, and to lead souls to heaven in the Church's own road. These very bonds, this vow so blindly to be fulfilled, made me, in after years, an infidel.”
He paused to look at her.
“I am listening, speak on,” said Olive Rothesay.
“As you say truly, I am one whose natural bent of mind is less to faith than to knowledge. Above all, I am one who hates all falsehood, all hypocritical show. Perchance in the desert I might have learned to serve God. Face to face with Him I might have worshiped His revealings. But when between me and the one great Truth came a thousand petty veils of cunning forms and blindly taught precedents; when among my brethren I saw wicked men preaching virtue—men without brains enough to acquire a mere worldly profession, such as law or physic, set to expound the mighty mysteries of religion—then I said to myself, 'The whole system is a lie!' So I cast it from me, and my soul stood forth in its naked strength before the Creator of all.”
“But why did you still keep up this awful mockery?”
“Because,” and his voice sounded hoarse and hollow, “just then there was upon me a madness which all men have in youth—love. For that I became a liar in the face of Heaven, of men, and of my own soul.”
“It was a great sin.”