her hands afresh.

"Laura, since that night I have been my Lord's. It seemed to me that He
had come Himself--come from His cross--to raise two souls from the depths
of Hell. Marie went into a convent, and died in peace and blessedness; I
came home here, to do my duty if I could--and save my soul. That seems to
you a mere selfish bargain with God--an 'egotism'--that you hate. But
look at the root of it. Is the world under sin--and has a God died for
it? All my nature--my intellect, my heart, my will, answer 'Yes.' But if
a God died, and must die--cruelly, hideously, at the hands of His
creatures--to satisfy eternal justice, what must that sin be that demands
the Crucifixion? Of what revolt, what ruin is not the body capable? I
knew--for I had gone down into the depths. Is any chastisement too heavy,
any restraint too harsh, if it keep us from the sin for which our Lord
must die? And if He died, are we not His from the first moment of our
birth--His first of all? Is it a selfish bargain to yield Him what He
purchased at such a cost, to take care that our just debt to Him is
paid--so far as our miserable humanity can pay it. All these
mortifications, and penances, and self-denials that you hate so, that
make the saints so odious in your eyes, spring from two great facts--Sin
and the Crucifixion. But, Laura, are they _true_?"

He spoke in a low, calm voice, yet Laura knew well that his life was
poured into each word. She herself did not, could not, speak. But it
seemed to her strangely that some spring within her was broken--some
great decision had been taken, by whom she could not tell.

He looked with alarm at her pallor and silence.

"Laura, those are the hard and awful--to us Catholics, the