‘And could you not effect these objects just as well by living in the world, instead of burying yourself alive?’ asked Rhoda drily.
‘I could not trust myself to do it, Rhoda. My aspirations are good, but my flesh is frail, and the temptations of this life might prove too strong for me.’
‘Then I don’t see much good in your repentance, Fred,’ said the girl. ‘If you are obliged to shut yourself up to prevent your sinning, your abstinence cannot be of much value in God’s eyes. Your virtue will lie in the four walls of your clergy house, not in yourself.’
The young man sat silent. He did not like the tone adopted by his former friend. It was too much an echo of something which he could not drive out of his mind, nor his heart.
‘Is this all you have to say to me, Rhoda?’ he asked after a pause.
‘No, Fred. I came up from Luton this morning expressly to see you. I heard, through my mother—you know how—that you were in trouble and danger, and I see now that both reports were true. I couldn’t think what the danger might be! I was told that you were being entangled in a net that would close round you, and deliver over your soul and body into the keeping of others. I understand what they meant now! When you have become a priest, you will no longer be a man. You will be a slave, obliged to go here, or there, or do this or give up the other, as your superiors choose.’
‘But it will be all for my good, Rhoda. I am not fit to look after, or take care of, myself.’
‘Perhaps so, but I entreat of you, Fred, not to do this thing in too great a hurry! You are not in a fit state to judge for yourself at this moment! You are so grieved by the loss of your wife, that you have but one wish—to give up the world and everything in it, and be left to yourself and your own thoughts for ever. I know what the feeling is! Do you suppose that I have not felt it also? Do you suppose that I do not know what it is to despair of God’s existence, and to believe that He neither sees nor hears what His unfortunate creatures are doing or suffering?’
‘You, Rhoda, you? But what trouble have you had to make you despair like this?’
The girl turned and looked him full in the face. Was it possible that he could be so selfish and absorbed in his own sorrows, as entirely to have forgotten hers?