“No,” he answered. He rejoiced fiercely that she should have asked him. The question was not bold, but a natural resumption of the old footing “Not that I mean to imply,” he added, returning her smile, “that those prospects' are in any way improved.”
“Are they any worse?” she said.
“I see the bishop to-morrow. I have no idea what position he will take. But even if he should decide not to recommend me for trial many difficult problems still remain to be solved.”
“I know. It's fine,” she continued, after a moment, “the way you are going ahead as if there were no question of your not remaining; and getting all those people into the church and influencing them as you did when they had come for all sorts of reasons. Do you remember, the first time I met you, I told you I could not think of you as a clergyman. I cannot now—less than ever.”
“What do you think of me as?” he asked.
“I don't know,” she considered. “You are unlike any person I have ever known. It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John's as a church. You have transformed it into something that seems new. I'm afraid I can't describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have always associated with churches. I wanted to see you, before I went away,” she went on steadily, “and when Eleanor mentioned that you were coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me. Do you think me shameless?”
The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient. He could not trust himself to speak.
“Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I never can express myself in writing. I seem to congeal.”
“After what I have done for you!” he exclaimed: “What can I have done?”
“You have done more than you know,” she answered, in a low voice. “More, I think, than I know. How are such things to be measured, put into words? You have effected some change in me which defies analysis, a change of attitude,—to attempt to dogmatize it would ruin it. I prefer to leave it undefined—not even to call it an acquisition of faith. I have faith,” she said, simply, “in what you have become, and which has made you dare, superbly, to cast everything away... It is that, more than anything you have said. What you are.”