And yet if she had gone to Mr Brown, she would have found him kind too--very kind; but solemnly kind--severely kind; his long saintly face beaming with religious tenderness--not human cordiality; and his heart full of interest in her spiritual condition, not sympathy with the unhappiness which his own teaching had produced; nay, rather inclined to gloat over this unhappiness as the sign of grace bestowed and an awakening conscience.
But notwithstanding the comfort Mr Cowie had given her--the best he had, poor man!--Annie's distress soon awoke again.

To know that she could not be near God in peace and love without fulfilling certain mental conditions--that he would not have her just as she was now, filled her with an undefined but terribly real misery, only the more distressing that it was vague with the vagueness of the dismal negation from which it sprung.
It was not however the strength of her love to God that made her unhappy in being thus barred out from him.

It was rather the check thus given to the whole upward tendency of her being, with its multitude of undefined hopes and longings now drawing nigh to the birth.

It was in her ideal self rather than her conscious self that her misery arose.
And now, dearly as she loved Mr Cowie, she began to doubt whether he knew much about the matter.

He had put her off without answering her questions, either because he thought she had no business with such things, or because he had no answer to give.