He lingered a little on the words, his face buried in his hands. Then slowly he turned back to an earlier page—
"Man must use creatures as being in themselves indifferent. He must not be under their power, but use them for his own purpose, his own first and chiefest purpose, the salvation of his soul."
A shudder passed through him. He rose hastily from his seat, and began to pace the room. He had already passed through a wrestle of the same kind, and had gone away to fight down temptation. To-night the struggle was harder. The waves of rising passion broke through him.
"Little pale, angry face! I gave her a scolding like a child—what joy to have forgiven her like a child!—to have asked her pardon in return—to have felt the soft head against my breast. She was very fierce with me—she hates me, I suppose. And yet—she is not indifferent to me!—she knows when I am there. Downstairs she was conscious of me all through—I knew it. Her secret was in her face. I guessed it—foolish child—from the first moment. Strange, stormy nature!—I see it all—her passion for her father, and for these peasants as belonging to him—her hatred of me and of our faith, because her father hated us—her feeling for Augustina—that rigid sense, of obligation she has, just on the two or three points—points of natural affection. It is this sense, perhaps, that makes the soul of her struggle with this house—with me. How she loathes all that we love—humility, patience, obedience! She would sooner die than obey. Unless she loved! Then what an art, what an enchantment to command her! It would tax a lover's power, a lover's heart, to the utmost. Ah!"
He stood still, and with an effort of iron resolution put from him the fancies that were thronging on the brain. If it were possible for him to conquer her, conceivable that he might win her—such a dream was forbidden to him, Alan Helbeck, a thousandfold! Such a marriage would be the destruction of innumerable schemes for the good of the Church, for the perfecting of his own life. It would be the betrayal of great trusts, the abandonment of great opportunities. "My life would centre in her. She would come first—the Church second. Her nature would work on mine—not mine on hers. Could I ever speak to her even of what I believe?—the very alphabet of it is unknown to her. I shrink from proselytism. God forgive me!—it is her wild pagan self that I love—that I desire——"
The blast of human longing, human pain, was hard to meet—hard to subdue.
But the Catholic fought—and conquered.
"I am not my own—I have taken tasks upon me that no honest man could betray. There are vows on me also, that bind me specially to our Lord—to his Church. The Church frowns on such a love—such marriages. She does not forbid them—but they pain her heart. I have accepted her judgment till now, without difficulty, without conflict. Now to obey is hard. But I can obey—we are not asked impossibilities."
He walked to the crucifix, and threw himself down before it. A midnight stillness brooded over the house.
* * * * *
But far away, in an upper room, Laura Fountain had cried herself to sleep—only to wake again and again, with the tears flooding her cheeks. Was it merely a disagreeable and exciting scene she had gone through? What was this new invasion of her life?—this new presence to the inward eye of a form and look that at once drew her and repulsed her. A hundred alien forces were threatening and pressing upon her—and out from the very heart of them came this strange drawing—this magnetism—this troubling misery.