Presently the clergyman spoke again.
‘I don’t think we shall agree—so let us cease to argue. What I want you to understand is, that I do love the Church, and cannot part from her without deep pain—without, in fact, rupturing all my most cherished associations. But there is another complication which makes this affair unusually distressing to me. You know I am engaged to be married?’
‘Ah, yes! I heard something about it. I begin to see your difficulty. You are afraid——’
He hesitated, as if not liking to complete the sentence.
‘Afraid of what, pray?’
‘Well, that, when you are pronounced heretical, she will throw you over!’
The clergyman smiled curiously and shook his head.
‘If that were all,’ he replied, ‘I should be able very easily to resign myself to the consequences of my heresy; but, fortunately or unfortunately, the lady to whom I am engaged (our engagement, by the way, is only private) is not likely to throw me over, however much I may seem to deserve it.’
‘Then why distress yourself?’
‘Simply because I doubt my right to entail upon her the consequences of my heterodoxy. She herself is liberal-minded, but she does not perceive that any connection with a heretic must mean, for a sensitive woman, misery and martyrdom. When I leave the Church I shall be practically ruined—not exactly in pocket, for, as you know, I have some money of my own—but intellectually and socially. The Church never pardons, and seldom spares.’