There was Divine compassion, mingled with human amusement, in the smile which was on Agnes’s lips as she looked up at him.
“Have you tried it, Mr Louvaine?”
Aubrey shook his head. “I have tried a good many things, but not Puritan piety. It ever seemed to me a most weary and dreary matter,—an eternal ‘Thou shalt not’ carved o’er the gate of every garden of delight that I would fain enter. They may be angels that stand there, but they bear flaming swords.”
He spoke lightly, yet there was an accent in his voice which revealed to Agnes a deep unfilled void in his heart.
“Don’t try piety,” she said quietly. “Try Jesus Christ instead. There are no flaming swords in the way to Him, and the truest and deepest satisfaction cannot be reached without Him.”
“Have you found it thus, Mrs Agnes?”
“I have, Mr Louvaine.”
“But, then,—you see,—you have not tried other fashions of pleasure, maybe,” said Aubrey, slowly.
“Have you?” said Agnes.
“Ay—a good many.”