Yes, he says to himself, he loves Agnes,--loves her all-sacredly as
her guardian angel does, who ever beholdeth the face of her Father in
Heaven. Why, then, does he shrink from her marriage? Is it not evident?
Has that tender soul, that poetic nature, that aspiring genius, anything
in common with the vulgar, coarse details of a peasant's life? Will not
her beauty always draw the eye of the licentious, expose her artless
innocence to solicitation which will annoy her and bring upon her head
the inconsiderate jealousy of her husband? Think of Agnes made subject
to the rude authority, to the stripes and correction, which men of the
lower class, under the promptings of jealousy, do not scruple to inflict
on their wives! What career did society, as then organized, present to
such a nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He has the answer.
The Church has opened a career to woman which all the world denies her.

He remembers the story of the dyer's daughter of Siena, the fair Saint
Catharine. In his youth he had often visited the convent where one
of the first artists of Italy has immortalized her conflicts and her
victories, and knelt with his mother at the altar where she now communes
with the faithful. He remembered how, by her sanctity, her humility, and
her holy inspirations of soul, she had risen to the courts of princes,
whither she had been sent as ambassadress to arrange for the interests
of the Church; and then rose before his mind's eye the gorgeous picture
of Pinturicchio, where, borne in celestial repose and purity amid all
the powers and dignitaries of the Church, she is canonized as one of
those that shall reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.

Was it wrong, therefore, in him, though severed from all womankind by a
gulf of irrevocable vows, that he should feel a kind of jealous property
in this gifted and beautiful creature? and though he might not, even in
thought, dream of possessing her himself, was there sin in the vehement