"Have you seen my Lady Ingram of late?"
"Within the last six months."
"How does she at Chaillot?"
"The nuns say she is killing herself with austerities, and she looks as though she might be. She has her salvation to make, you see."
"What a dreadful delusion!" sighed Celia.
"One of man's hundred usurpations of the prerogative of God. If man may not save himself wholly, he will save himself in part; he will do anything rather than let Christ do everything. 'Tis just the world, the flesh, and the devil, in a peculiar shape, and of a very fair color. 'Puffed up by his fleshly mind,'[[2]] saith St. Paul of this manner of mortifying of the flesh. The subtlest serving of the devil lies, I think, in this kind of renouncing of the world. And the world, in whatever shape, 'passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"[[3]]
As Edward spoke the last word, the old clock in the hall struck nine. Both rose, and Edward, drawing Celia to him, kissed his last farewell.
"God be brother and sister to you, dear," he said, "and keep thee in all thy ways;[[4]] set thee in the secret place of the Most High, that thou mayest abide under the shadow of the Almighty.[[5]] Christ be with thee! Amen!"
They went softly down to the door opening into the well, outside of which was Harry with a ladder. There was another figure there beside Harry's, but the moonlight was not sufficient to show who it might be.
"Say farewell to Patient for me," said Edward. "I wish I could have seen her. Adieu!"