“I understand that hunger,” said Father Robertson.
Just then the chimes sounded in the Cathedral, and they stopped on the narrow path to listen, looking up at the great gray tower which held the voices sweet to their souls.
“I understand that hunger,” he repeated, when the chimes died away. “It can be fierce as any hunger after a sin. In your case you felt it was not free from egoism, this strong desire?”
“Your sermon made me look into my heart, and I did think that perhaps I was an egoist in my religious feeling, that I was selfishly intent on my own soul, that in my religion, if I did what I longed presently to do, I should be thinking almost solely of myself.”
Rather abruptly Father Robertson put a question:
“There was nothing else which drew you towards marriage?”
“I liked and admired Dion very much. I thought him an exceptional sort of man. I knew he cared for me in a beautiful sort of way. That touched me. And”—she slightly hesitated, and a soft flush came to her cheeks—“I felt that he was a good man in a way—I believe, I am almost sure, that very few young men are good in the particular way I mean. Of all the things in Dion that was the one which most strongly called to me.”
Father Robertson understood her allusion to physical purity.
“I couldn’t have married him but for that,” she added.
“If I had known you when you were a girl I believe I should not have expected you to marry,” said Father Robertson.