“I should have first to know what you really suppose.”

She shook her head.  “It would n’t do.  You would be horrified to learn even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of evil displayed in my very mistakes.”

“Well, then,” said Rowland, “I will ask no questions.  But, at a venture, I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very good.”

“Can it be, can it be,” she asked, “that you too are trying to flatter me?  I thought you and I had fallen, from the first, into rather a truth-speaking vein.”

“Oh, I have not abandoned it!” said Rowland; and he determined, since he had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage farther.  The opportunity seemed excellent.  But while he was hesitating as to just how to begin, the young girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in her lap, “Please tell me about your religion.”

“Tell you about it?  I can’t!” said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.

She flushed a little.  “Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot be put into words, nor communicated to my base ears?”

“It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can’t detach myself from it sufficiently to talk about it.”

“Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive.  It should wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to sway all hearts!”

“One’s religion takes the color of one’s general disposition.  I am not aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent.”

“Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair!  I am sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it, can be terribly eloquent.  To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way.  What do you know of anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you?  How do you know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge them in this life?”

“I don’t know it, any more than any one knows the contrary.  But one’s religion is extremely ingenious in doing without knowledge.”

“In such a world as this it certainly needs to be!”

Rowland smiled.  “What is your particular quarrel with this world?”

“It ’s a general quarrel.  Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent.  We all seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque.  It all comes over me here so dismally!  The very atmosphere of this cold, deserted church seems to mock at one’s longing to believe in something.  Who cares for it now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously?  Poor stupid Assunta there gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does n’t understand, and you and I, proper, passionless tourists, come lounging in to rest from a walk.  And yet the Catholic church was once the proudest institution in the world, and had quite its own way with men’s souls.  When such a mighty structure as that turns out to have a flaw, what faith is one to put in one’s poor little views and philosophies?  What is right and what is wrong?  What is one really to care for?  What is the proper rule of life?  I am tired of trying to discover, and I suspect it ’s not worth the trouble.  Live as most amuses you!”