"Because I do know it, though the truth in it may be different for
everyone. What is more, I know that one day you will agree with me."

She looked at him curiously in the flashing way that was peculiar to
her, for something in his tone and manner impressed her.

"Perhaps. I hope so, Godfrey, but at present I often feel as though I
believed in nothing, except that I am I and you are you, and my father
is--there he's calling me. Goodbye," and she was gone.

This particular conversation, one of many, had, as it happened,
important results on the lives of these two young creatures. Isobel,
in whom the love of Truth, however ugly it might be and however
destructive of hope, faith, charity and all the virtues, was a
burning, inbred passion, took to the secret study of theology in order
to find out why Godfrey was so convinced as to the teachings of the
Bible. She was not old or mellowed enough to understand that the real
reason must be discovered, not in the letter but in the spirit, that
is in the esoteric meaning of the sayings as to receiving the Kingdom
of Heaven like a child and the necessity of being born again.
Therefore with a fierce intensity, thrusting aside the spirit and its
promptings which perhaps are shadows of the only real truths, she
wrestled with the letter. She read the Divines, also much of the
Higher Criticism, the lives of Saints, the Sacred Books themselves and
many other things, only to arise bewildered, and to a great extent
unbelieving.

"Why should I believe what I cannot prove?" she cried in her heart,
and once with her lips to Godfrey.