Here Mr. Dyceworthy paused for breath. Thelma was silent, but a faint smile gleamed on her face.
"Wherefore," he went on, "I do adjure you, as you desire grace and redemption, to utterly cast from you the vile trinket, I have,--Heaven knows how reluctantly! . . . returned to your keeping,--to trample upon it, and renounce it as a device of Satan. . ." He stopped, surprised and indignant, as she raised the much-abused emblem to her lips and kissed it reverently.
"It is the sign of peace and salvation," she said steadily, "to me, at least. You waste your words, Mr. Dyceworthy; I am a Catholic."
"Oh, say not so!" exclaimed the minister, now thoroughly roused to a pitch of unctuous enthusiasm. "Say not so. Poor child! who knowest not the meaning of the word used. Catholic signifies universal. God forbid a universal Papacy! You are not a Catholic--no! You are a Roman--by which name we understand all that is most loathsome and unpleasing unto God! But I will wrestle for your soul,--yea, night and day will I bend my spiritual sinews to the task,--I will obtain the victory,--I will exorcise the fiend! Alas, alas! you are on the brink of hell--think of it!" and Mr. Dyceworthy stretched out his hand with his favorite pulpit gesture. "Think of the roasting and burning,--the scorching and withering of souls! Imagine, if you can, the hopeless, bitter, eternal damnation," and here he smacked his lips as though he were tasting something excellent,--"from which there is no escape! . . . for which there shall be no remedy!"
"It is a gloomy picture," said Thelma, with a quiet sparkle in her eye. "I am sorry,--for you. But I am happier,--my faith teaches of purgatory--there is always a little hope!"
"There is none! there is none!" exclaimed the minister rising in excitement from his seat, and swaying ponderously to and fro as he gesticulated with hands and head. "You are doomed,--doomed! There is no middle course between hell and heaven. It must be one thing or the other; God deals not in half-measures! Pause, oh pause, ere you decide to fall! Even at the latest hour the Lord desires to save your soul,--the Lord yearns for your redemption, and maketh me to yearn also. Fröken Thelma!" and Mr. Dyceworthy's voice deepened in solemnity, "there is a way which the Lord hath whispered in mine ears,--a way that pointeth to the white robe and the crown of glory,--a way by which you shall possess the inner peace of the heart with bliss on earth as the forerunner of bliss in heaven!"