But she will not come to you unless, in so doing, she is
choosing what to her is the harder part."
"The harder part!" exclaimed the Knight. "You forget, my lord, she
loves me."
"Do I forget?" replied the Bishop. "Have you found me given to
forgetting? The very fact that she loves you, is the heaviest factor
against you--just now. To such women there comes ever the instinctive
feeling, that that which would be sweet must be wrong, and the hard
path of renunciation the only right one. They climb not Zion's mount
to reach the crown. They turn and wend their way through Gethsemane to
Calvary, sure that thus alone can they at last inherit. And what can
we say? Are they not following in the footsteps of the Son of God? I
fear my nature turns another way. I incline to follow King David, or
Solomon in all his glory, chanting glad Songs of Ascent, from the
Palace on Mount Zion to the Temple on Mount Moriah. All things
harmonious, in sound, form, or colour, seem to me good and, therefore,
right. But long years in Italy have soaked me in the worship of the
beautiful, inextricably intermingled with the adoration of the Divine.
I mistrust mine own judgment, and I fear me"--said the Prelate, whose
gentle charity had won so many to religion--"I greatly fear me, I am
far from being Christlike. But I recognise the spirit of
self-crucifixion, when I see it. And the warning that I give you, is
not because I forget, but because I remember.
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