"Yes, yes; but for me it is harder—oh! so much harder."
"Because you have looked forward to being an Apostle?"
"Miss Bolton, you do me injustice—not in what you say, but in the tone you say it in. No, it is not the giving up of the Apostleship that troubles me, though I did hope that I might help in my way to make the world a new earth; but it is the shock and downfall of their hopes to all those good earnest people, and especially—oh! especially, Miss Bolton, to my own dear father and mother." His eyes filled with tears as he spoke.
"I can understand," said Meenie, sympathetically, her eyes dimming a little in response. "They have set their hearts all their lives long on your accomplishing this work, and it will be to them the disappointment of a cherished romance."
They looked at one another a few minutes in silence.
"How long have you begun to have your doubts?" Meenie asked after the pause.
"A long time, but most of all since I saw you. It has made me—it has made me hesitate more about the fundamental article of our faith. Even now, I am not sure whether it is not wrong of me to be talking so with you about such matters."
"I see," said Meenie, a little more archly; "it comes perilously near——" and she broke off, for she felt she had gone a step too far.
"Perilously near falling in love," Paul continued boldly, turning his big eyes full upon her. "Yes, perilously near."
Their eyes met; Meenie's fell; and they said no more. But they both felt they understood one another. Just at that moment the Professor's wife came up to interrupt the tête-à-tête; "for that young Owen," she said to herself, "is really getting quite too confidential with dear Meenie."