“It’s a very great thing,” he said, and from standing in front of her, he now sat down beyond a little table before her sofa.  “How can I ask you to share my life if you don’t share my faith?”

“Why, I should try to believe everything that you do, of cou’se.”

“Because I do?”

“Well-yes.”

“You wring my heart!  Are you willing to study—­to look into these questions—­to—­to”—­It all seemed very hopeless, very absurd, but she answered seriously: 

“Yes, but I believe it would all come back to just where it is, now.”

“What you say, Clementina, makes me so happy; but it ought to make me—­miserable!  And you would do all this, be all this for me, a wretched and erring creature of the dust, and yet not do it for—­God?”

Clementina could only say, “Perhaps if He meant me to do it for Him, He would have made me want to.  He made you.”

“Yes,” said Gregory, and for a long time he could not say any more.  He sat with his elbow on the table, and his head against his lifted hand.

“You see,” she began, gently, “I got to thinking that even if I eva came to believe what you wanted me to, I should be doing it after all, because you wanted me to—­”

“Yes, yes,” he answered, desolately.  “There is no way out of it.  If you only hated me, Clementina, despised me—­I don’t mean that.  But if you were not so good, I could have a more hope for you—­for myself.  It’s because you are so good that I can’t make myself wish to change you, and yet I know—­I am afraid that if you told me my life and objects were wrong, I should turn from them, and be whatever you said.  Do you tell me that?”

“No, indeed!” cried Clementina, with abhorrence.  “Then I should despise you.”

He seemed not to heed her.  He moved his lips as if he were talking to himself, and he pleaded, “What shall we do?”

“We must try to think it out, and if we can’t—­if you can’t let me give up to you unless I do it for the same reason that you do; and if I can’t let you give up for me, and I know I could neva do that; then—­we mustn’t!”

“Do you mean, we must part?  Not see each other again?”

“What use would it be?”

“None,” he owned.  She had risen, and he stood up perforce.  “May I—­may I come back to tell you?”

“Tell me what?” she asked.

“You are right!  If I can’t make it right, I won’t come.  But I won’t say good bye.  I—­can’t.”

She let him go, and Maddalena came in at the door.  “Signorina,” she said, “the signora is not well.  Shall I send for the doctor?”

“Yes, yes, Maddalena.  Run!” cried Clementina, distractedly.  She hurried to Mrs. Lander’s room, where she found her too sick for reproaches, for anything but appeals for help and pity.  The girl had not to wait for Doctor Welwright’s coming to understand that the attack was severer than any before.

It lasted through the day, and she could see that he was troubled.  It had not followed upon any imprudeuce, as Mrs. Lander pathetically called Clementina to witness when her pain had been so far quelled that she could talk of her seizure.