she learned her catechism, and was confirmed just before she went to
boarding-school, as was the custom with Ashurst young women, and sung in
the choir, while Mr. Denner drew wonderful chords from the organ, and she
was a very well-bred and modest young woman, taking her belief for
granted, and giving no more thought to the problems of theology than
girls usually do.

But this was before she met John Ward. After those first anxious
questions of his, Helen began to understand how slight was her hold upon
religion. But she did not talk about her frame of mind, nor dignify the
questions which began to come by calling them doubts; how could they be
doubts, when she had never known what she had believed? So, by degrees,
she built up a belief for herself.

Love of good was really love of God, in her mind. Heaven meant
righteousness, and hell an absence from what was best and truest; but
Helen did not feel that a soul must wait for death before it was
overtaken by hell. It was very simple and very short, this creed of
hers; yet it was the doorway through which grief and patience were to
come,--the sorrow of the world, the mystery of sin, and the hope of that
far-off divine event.

There was no detail of religious thought with Helen Jeffrey; ideas
presented themselves to her mind with a comprehensiveness and simplicity
which would have been impossible to Mr. Ward. But at this time he knew
nothing of the mental processes that were leading her out of the calm,
unreasoning content of childhood into a mist of doubt, which, as she
looked into the future, seemed to darken into night. He was struggling
with his conscience, and asking himself if he had any right to seek her
love.