"No, not that," he answered, dropping his voice; "but--but I begin to doubt myself."
She leaned forward in her chair. Some power outside of her own will seemed to constrain her.
"Philip," she said, bending over and touching his hand, "has love made you doubt?"
The question evidently took him entirely by surprise. She wondered what impulse had made her speak and how her question would affect him. He flushed to his forehead, and cast at her a look so full of pathetic appeal that she felt the tears come into her eyes. It was the look of a hunted creature which sees no way of escape, yet which has not the fury of resistance, which pleads its own weakness. She knew that Philip could not equivocate and that the secret of his heart lay bare before her. She shrank from what she had done, and a flood of pity and sympathy filled her mind.
He gave her no more than a single look, and then buried his face in his hands.
"I have betrayed my high calling," he exclaimed in a voice of bitter suffering. "I have put my hand to the plough and looked back. I am too weak to be worthy to"--
"Stop," she interposed brusquely, although she was deeply touched. "I can't listen to that sort of talk. It isn't wholesome and it isn't manly. If you have fallen short of your ideal, your experience is that of the rest of the race. I suppose the secret of our making any progress is the power of conceiving things higher than we can reach. It keeps us trying."
"My dear boy," she interrupted him again, "you are like the rest of us. You told yourself that you would be above all the passions and emotions of common humanity, and you are discouraged to find that you're human after all. That's really the whole of it."
It was not necessary for her to interrupt him now. He stopped of his own will, casting down his eyes and blushing like a school-boy. It seemed to her that it might be better to try raillery.
"To allow yourself, O wise cousin!" she cried. "Men do not allow or disallow themselves to love. It's deeper business than that."
"But I should have had strength not to yield."
"Is there anything discreditable in loving?" she demanded.
"In intention I am; and that is the same in the sight of Heaven."
She could not repress a gesture of impatience. She felt at once an inward annoyance and a secret admiration. The temper of his mind was exasperatingly like her own in its tenacity of conviction. He would not excuse himself by any shifts, no matter how convincing they might seem to others. The matter must be met fairly and frankly, and she must reach his deepest feelings if she would move him. She reflected how best to deal with him, and with her thoughts mingled the question whether Edith Fenton could return Philip's love. The young man was well made and sufficiently good-looking, although paled by study and austerities. He was of good birth and property, and from a worldly point of view not entirely an unsuitable match for the widow, should she think of a second husband. He was somewhat younger than Mrs. Fenton; and Helen was not without the thought that this passion might be on his part no more than the inevitable result of his coming in contact with a beautiful woman after having been immured in the monastic seclusion of the Clergy House; a passion which would pass with a wider acquaintance with the world. The whole matter perplexed and troubled her, and yet she earnestly longed to help her cousin.