“Yes,” he answered steadily; “and for your sweet sake, Bride, I will strive to do even that—evil and full of temptation as my world is.”
“Not for my sake, Eustace, not for my sake,” she replied, with an earnestness he scarcely understood; “that would be indeed a vain resolve. If you cannot yet strive in the power and might of the Risen and Ascended Lord, whom you deny, strive at least in the power of the right you own and believe in, though you know not from whence it comes.”
He looked at her in some amaze.
“Why do you say I deny your Risen Saviour, Bride?”
“Because I heard you with your own lips do so, in effect if not in actual words. You spoke of His miracles as being ordinary gifts of healing exaggerated by the devotion of His followers; of the Transfiguration being a like delusion—men awakened from sleep seeing their Master standing in the glory of the sunrise, and mistaking the morning mists for other luminous figures beside Him. You said that the Resurrection had been accounted for by the theory that the Saviour did not die, but was taken from the Cross in a state of trance, from which He recovered in the tomb.”
A flush mounted quickly into Eustace’s face.
“You mistake me, Bride,” he answered hastily. “We were discussing—Mr. St. Aubyn and I—some of the teachings of various philosophers and thinkers, and I was explaining to him how Paulus had extended to the New Testement the method which Eichhorn had applied to the Old. I was not defending the theory, but merely stating it as a matter of speculation amongst men of a certain school.”
Bride looked at him intently.
“If that is so, I am thankful and glad; but I heard too much not to know very well where your sympathies and convictions lie. If you do not follow the impious teachings of this Paulus, you are very far along the road which does not lead to the Father’s house. No, Eustace; let us talk no more of this—it is only painful to both. I shall never convince you; but I shall pray for you. And now farewell. I trust when next we meet it will be without this sense of unutterable distance between us; but it must be you to change—for I never shall.”
She turned and left him standing there in the sunshine. That same day Eustace took leave of Penarvon, and commenced his backward journey to London.