"Undoubtedly," he agreed vigorously, and thought involuntarily of Mr.
Engel's phrased fatty degeneration of the soul. "Yet I can see the
signs, on all sides, of a gradual emancipation, of which I might be
deemed an example." A smile came into his eyes, like the sun on a
grey-green sea.

"Oh, you could never be a casuist!" she exclaimed, with a touch of
vehemence. "You are much too positive. It is just that note, which is
characteristic of so many clergymen, that note of smoothing-over and
apology, which you lack. I could never feel it, even when you were
orthodox. And now--" words failed her as she inspected his ruggedness.

"And now," he took her up, to cover his emotion, "now I am not to be
classified!"

Still examining him, she reflected on this.

"Classified?" Isn't it because you're so much of an individual that one
fails to classify you? You represent something new to my experience,
something which seems almost a contradiction--an emancipated Church."

"You imagined me out of the Church,--but where?" he demanded.

"That's just it," she wondered intimately, "where? When I try, I can see
no other place for you. Your place as in the pulpit."

He uttered a sharp exclamation, which she did not heed.

"I can't imagine you doing institutional work, as it is called,--you're
not fitted for it, you'd be wasted in it. You gain by the historic