"It was that meeting began it," said Marion, beginning as suddenly as the doctor had done. "I have never been happy one minute since then."
"And how did that begin it? You had been a Christian before that."
"I thought so," said Marion. "I even thought I was better than most, though I knew in my own soul that I was indulging myself in wrong tempers and ways. Oh, I was too silly for anything," cried Marion, covering her face with her hands. "I used to have all sorts of dreams about teaching and influencing others and leading a higher and more spiritual life than my good aunt and uncle and my old grandfather, and all the while I was idling away my time in school, missing my lessons, and making false excuses, despising better people than myself, and allowing myself to be in all sorts of bad tempers all the time. There never was one so foolish, I am sure."
"I am not," said the doctor. "I have heard more than one person talk loudly and abundantly about 'holiness' and 'the higher life' who did not seem to me to have learned the very A, B, C of Christian morals. Well?"
"That was the way with me when I came here," continued Marion. "It seems almost too bad to tell, but, Doctor Fenn, I was really vexed and disappointed when I found that father had family prayers and maintained a chapel. I thought I was going to be a kind of family missionary, like a girl I had read of in a book."
"A good many kinds of girls that one reads of in books are fortunately not often found in real life," said the doctor, dryly. "Life would hardly be bearable else."
"Well, I couldn't be here a great while without seeing how much better they all were than I," continued Marion. "I saw how kind they were to each other and to auntie and me, though I was always bothering and making mistakes, and how they all bore with poor Gerty, and you know she is trying sometimes."
"I think I do—sometimes."
"I had begun to see a little of all this, but somehow that night when we went to the meeting it was all displayed to me at once. It was just as I told Bram—as if the rest saw some one whom I was trying to see and hear, but couldn't for my life. Then Bram and I got talking coming home. I do think he is the very dearest boy that I ever heard of. I never thought it would be half so nice to have brothers, and he seemed to show me to myself. He said the Pharisees couldn't come into the kingdom of heaven because 'they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.' Then I saw that had been the way with me. I had not wished really to be a Christian, but only to be thought so. I thought it must be all right with me because I wanted to do so much work and have so much influence, and I used to spend hours in dreaming about it. But now I see there was no reality in it at all."
She stopped and sat silent.