V.
Aunt Lavvy was getting ready to go away. She held up her night gown to her chin, smoothing and folding back the sleeves. You thought of her going to bed in the ugly, yellow, flannel night gown, not caring, lying in bed and thinking about God.
Mary was sorry that Aunt Lavvy was going. As long as she was there you felt that if only she would talk everything would at once become more interesting. She thrilled you with that look of having something— something that she wouldn't talk about—up her sleeve. The Encyclopaedia man said that Unitarianism was a kind of Pantheism. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she knew the truth about God. Aunt Lavvy would know whether she ought to tell her mother.
"Aunt Lavvy, if you loved somebody and you found out that their religion wasn't true, would you tell them or wouldn't you?"
"It would depend on whether they were happy in their religion or not."
"Supposing you'd found out one that was more true and much more beautiful, and you thought it would make them happier?"
Aunt Lavvy raised her long, stubborn chin. In her face there was a cold exaltation and a sudden hardness.
"No religion was ever more true or more beautiful than Christianity," she said.
"There's Pantheism. Aren't Unitarians a kind of Pantheists?"
Aunt Lavvy's white face flushed. "Unitarians Pantheists? Who's been talking to you about Pantheism?"
"Nobody. Nobody knows about it. I had to find out."
"The less you find out about it the better."
"Aunt Lavvy, you're talking like Mr. Propart. Supposing I honestly think
Pantheism's true?"
"You've no right to think anything about it," Aunt Lavvy said.
"Now you're talking like Papa. And I did so hope you wouldn't."
"I only meant that it takes more time than you've lived to find out what honest thinking is. When you're twenty years older you'll know what this opinion of yours is worth."
"I know what it's worth to me, now, this minute."
"Is it worth making your mother miserable?"
"That's what Mark would say. How did you know I was thinking of Mamma?"
"Because that's what my brother Victor said to me."