“But,” she went on, with an air of impartial diagnosis, “it has lasted.  I have been very happy.  I understand now what is meant by religion.  I understand what you felt about that man’s soul.  I understand, when you are preaching, that intense sense of worth-whileness.  I understand the religious sense, the religious attitude.  It makes everything worth while because of love.  It does not explain all the puzzles.  It does not answer questions, it swallows them up alive.  It makes everything so big, and at the same time so small, because there are infinite things too.  Then it insists on reality; I see now it must insist on dogma for fear of unreality.  Renan was quite wrong in that great sentence of his:  ’Il ne faut rien dire de limitee en face de l’infini.’  The infinite is a fog to us if there are no outlines in our conception of it.  Don’t you think so?”

There was a light in her face no one had ever seen there before.

“And the only outlines that can satisfy us are the outlines of a Personality.  As a rule I have always disliked individuals.  I know you are surprised.  Of course, you are just the other way; you have a touch of genius, a gift for being conscious of personalities, of being attracted to them.  Now I have never liked people; in fact, I’ve hated most of them.  But since this religious experience I have known”—­her voice dropped; it had been a little loud—­“I have known that I want a friend, and can have one.”

The priest was astonished by Molly.  He had never met any one like her before.  Her self-confidence was curious, and her eloquence was so sudden and abounding that his own words seemed to leave him.  She was in a moment as silent as she had been talkative, her eyes cast down on the floor.  Then she looked at him with an almost imperious questioning in her eyes.

“You have said so much that I expected to say myself,” he said, with a faint sense of humour, “and you have not asked me a single question.”

Molly laughed “Tell me,” she said, “I am right; it is all true?  I do understand religious experience, the religious sense at last, don’t I?”

“Shall I tell you what I miss in it?” he said, suppressing any further comment on her amazing assertion.  “I mean in all you have said.  And, oddly enough, the Welsh miner would have had it.  I mean that, seeing Our Lord as the One Friend of your life, you should also see that you have resisted and betrayed and offended Him during that life which He gave you.”

“No:  I have not thought much about that side of things” said Molly “I have been too happy.”

“You would be far happier if you did.”

“But what have I done?” said Molly, almost in a tone of injured respectability.

“Well, you have hated people—­or, at least” (in a tone of apology), “you said so just now.”

“Oh! yes; it’s quite true.  I am a great hater and an uncertain one.  I never know who it is going to be, or when it will come.”