God, the Father of spirits, is leading you! You, who believe in Him, how dare you fight against Him ?' 'Lancelot, I cannot--I cannot listen to you--read that!' And she handed him the vicar's letter.

He read it, tossed it on the carpet, and crushed it with his heel.
'Wretched pedant! Can your intellect be deluded by such barefaced sophistries?
"God's will," forsooth! And if your mother's opposition is not a sign that God's will--if it mean anything except your own will, or that--that man's--is against this mad project, and not for it, what sign would you have?
So "celibacy is the highest state!" And why?
Because "it is the safest and the easiest road to heaven ?" A pretty reason, vicar! I should have thought that that was a sign of a lower state and not a higher.

Noble spirits show their nobleness by daring the most difficult paths.

And even if marriage was but one weed-field of temptations, as these miserable pedants say, who have either never tried it, or misused it to their own shame, it would be a greater deed to conquer its temptations than to flee from them in cowardly longings after ease and safety!' She did not answer him, but kept her face buried in her hands.
'Again, I say, Argemone, will you fight against Fate--Providence-- God--call it what you will?
Who made us meet at the chapel?
Who made me, by my accident, a guest in your father's house! Who put it into your heart to care for my poor soul?
Who gave us this strange attraction towards each other, in spite of our unlikeness?
Wonderful that the very chain of circumstances which you seem to fancy the offspring of chance or the devil, should have first taught me to believe that there is a God who guides us! Argemone! speak, tell me, if you will, to go for ever; but tell me first the truth-- You love me!' A strong shudder ran through her frame--the ice of artificial years cracked, and the clear stream of her woman's nature welled up to the light, as pure as when she first lay on her mother's bosom: she lifted up her eyes, and with one long look of passionate tenderness she faltered out,-- 'I love you!' He did not stir, but watched her with clasped hands, like one who in dreams finds himself in some fairy palace, and fears that a movement may break the spell.
'Now, go,' she said; 'go, and let me collect my thoughts.

All this has been too much for me.