"I have tried to explain to Mary"—he said, desperately—"that I should feel myself a hypocrite and pretender in playing the part of a spiritual leader—when this great—failure—lay upon my conscience."
At that Catharine's tension gave way. Perplexity returned upon her.
"Oh! if it meant—if it meant"—she looked at him with a sudden, sweet timidity—"that you felt you had tried to do for Hester what only grace—what only a living Redeemer—could do for her—"
She broke off. But at last, as Meynell, her junior by fifteen years—her son almost—looked down into her face—her frail, aging, illumined face—there was something in the passion of her faith which challenged and roused his own; which for the moment, at any rate, and for the first time since the crisis had arisen revived in him the "fighter" he had tried to shed.
"The fault was not in the thing preached," he said, with a groan; "or so it seems to me—but in the preacher. The preacher—was unequal to the message."
Catharine was silent. And after a little more pacing he said in a more ordinary tone—and a humble one—
"Does Mary share this view of yours?"
At this Catharine was almost angry.
"As if I should say a word to her about it! Does she know—has she ever known—what you and I knew?"
His eyes, full of trouble, propitiated her. He took her hand and kissed it.