Robert was very nearly reduced to despair by the scene with Catherine we have described.

He spent a brooding and miserable hour in the vicar's study afterward, making up his mind as to what he should do.

One phrase of hers which had passed almost unnoticed in the shock of the moment was now ringing in his ears, maddening him by a sense of joy just within his reach, and yet barred away from him by an obstacle as strong as it was intangible.

'_We are not here only to be happy_,' she had said to him, with a look of ethereal exaltation worthy of her namesake of Alexandria.
The words had slipped from her involuntarily in the spiritual tension of her mood.

They were now filling Robert Elsmere's mind with a tormenting, torturing bliss.