“You know better than I.”
“But if you were such a man as I, with neither love for your vocation nor faith in it, should you not cease to be a priest?”
“If you ask me in that way,—yes,” answered the painter. “But I advise you nothing. I could not counsel another in such a case.”
“But you think and feel as I do,” said the priest, “and I am right, then.”
“I do not say you are wrong.”
Ferris was silent while Don Ippolito moved up and down the room, with his sliding step, like some tall, gaunt, unhappy girl. Neither could put an end to this interview, so full of intangible, inconclusive misery. Ferris drew a long breath, and then said steadily, “Don Ippolito, I suppose you did not speak idly to me of your—your feeling for Miss Vervain, and that I may speak plainly to you in return.”
“Surely,” answered the priest, pausing in his walk and fixing his eyes upon the painter. “It was to you as the friend of both that I spoke of my love, and my hope—which is oftener my despair.”
“Then you have not much reason to believe that she returns your—feeling?”
“Ah, how could she consciously return it? I have been hitherto a priest to her, and the thought of me would have been impurity. But hereafter, if I can prove myself a man, if I can win my place in the world.... No, even now, why should she care so much for my escape from these bonds, if she did not care for me more than she knew?”
“Have you ever thought of that extravagant generosity of Miss Vervain’s character?”