"I had opportunities of seeing it, of course, but somehow I never took them—and I dislike the subject of the play greatly now."
There was a certain vehemence in his voice.
"Why?" the Canon asked. "I remember my wife was very fond of it."
"I think it morbid and dangerous. There are troubles enough in life without adding to them such a hateful notion as a—a haunting; a horrible thing that—" he looked round with a sort of questioning gaze in his dark eyes—"that must be an impossibility."
"I don't know," the Canon said, without observing the glance. "I don't know. A sin may well haunt a man."
"Perhaps. But only as a memory, not as a jingle of bells, not as a definite noise, like a noise a man may hear in the street any day. That must be impossible. Now—don't you say so?"
Lily, on her sofa, had noticed the very peculiar excitement of the young doctor's manner, and that his denial was really delivered in the form of an ardent interrogation. But the Canon's mind was not so alert after the strain of pulpit oratory. He was calmly unaware of any personal thrill in the discussion.
"I would not be sure," he said. "God may have what men would call supernatural ways of punishment as well as natural ones."
"I decline to believe in the supernatural," Maurice said, rather harshly.
"Granted that these bells might ring in a man's mind, so that he believed that his ears actually heard them. That would be just as bad for him."