"And that 'something higher, vaster, purer and better'--would you call it the Church of Rome?" asked Walden. "In suggestion,--in emotion and poetic inspiration, yes!"--said Brent--"In theory and in practice, no!"
There was a pause. Walden sat for a few moments absorbed in anxious thought. Then he looked up with a cheerful air.
"Harry," he said--"Will you do me a favour? Promise that you will postpone the idea of seceding, or as you put it, 'returning' to Rome, for six months. Will you? At the end of that time we'll discuss it again."
The Bishop looked uneasy.
"I would rather do what has to be done at once,"--he said.
"Then I must talk to you straightly,"--continued John, bracing himself up, and squaring his shoulders resolutely--"I must forget that you are my Bishop, and speak just as man to man. All the facts of the case can be summed up in one word--Selfishness! Pure Selfishness, Harry!--and I never thought I should have had to convict you of it!"
Brent drew himself slowly up in his chair.
"Selfishness!" he echoed, dreamily--"I can take anything from you, John!--I did at college,--but--selfishness---"
"Selfishness!" repeated John, firmly--"You have had to suffer a grief--a great grief,--and because it was so sudden, so tragic and overwhelming, you draw a mourning veil of your own across the very face of God! You try to rule your diocese by the measure of your own rod of affliction. And, finding that nothing is clear to you, because of your own obstructive spirit, you would set up a fresh barrier between yourself and Eternal Wisdom, by deserting your post here, and separating yourself from all the world save the shadow of the woman you yourself loved! Harry, my dear old friend, unless I had heard this from your own lips, I should never have believed it of you!"
Brent sat heavily in his chair, sunk in a brooding melancholy.
"'The heart knoweth its own bitterness!'"--he murmured wearily-- "Your reproaches are just,--I know I deserve them, but they do not rouse me. They do not stir one pulse in my soul! What have I learned of Eternal Wisdom?--what have I seen? Nothing but cruelty upon cruelty dealt out, not to the wicked, but to the innocent! And because I protest against this, you call my spirit an obstructive one--well!--it may be so! But, Walden, you have never loved!--you have never felt all your life rush like a river to the sea of passion!--not low, debasing passion, but passion born of vitality, ardour, truth, hope, sympathy!--such emotion as most surely palpitates through the whole body of the natural creation, else there would be naught created. God Himself--if there be a God--must be conscious of Love! Do we not say: 'God IS Love'?--and this too while we suffer beneath His heavy chastisements which are truely more like Hate! I repeat, Walden, you have never loved,--till now perhaps--and even now you are scarcely conscious of the hidden strength of your own feelings. But suppose--just for the sake of argument--suppose this 'little girl' as you call her, Maryllia Vancourt, were to die suddenly, would you not, as you express it, 'draw a mourning veil of your own across the face of God'?"