"Oh, no! But I want to do what is right. And it seems to me that to let myself be happy like this would be wrong—"
"Wrong to let yourself be happy? Good heavens! Who has been teaching you such blasphemy as that?"
"No one has taught me anything, except my mother. But she was so good, and she had so many troubles, and she said that she would never have been able to bear them—to have borne life—had she not been stayed up by her religious faith. She told us, when it seemed to her that we might some day be cast upon the world to shift for ourselves, never to let go of that—to suffer and renounce everything rather than be tempted to give up that."
"Who has asked you to give it up?" he responded, with grave and gentle earnestness. "Not I. I would be the last man to dream of such a thing."
"But you—you have given up religion!" she broke forth, despairingly.
"Have I? I don't think so. Tell me what you mean by religion?"
"I mean what we have been brought up to believe."
"By the churches?"
"By the Church—the English Church—which I have always held to be the true Church."
"My dear child, every Church holds itself to be the true Church, and all the others to be false ones. Why should yours be right any more than other people's?"