"I really think," He said, "that Mr. Alden might spare you to us for that evening. It can't make much difference to those people what sort of singing they have. They can't appreciate anything very good, so you will be quite thrown away on them. And your voice is just what we want. I think you might beg off, for our sake!"
"I have promised," replied Nora gently, and with real regret in her tone.
"Ah, you hold to the good old Puritan rules, I see. Well, it does seem too bad! We shall have to put up with some very inferior voice that could have pleased that sort of audience just as well. Alden's very good and zealous, I know, and I quite understand his desire to give people like that some rational enjoyment, to keep them out of mischief; still, I think he would do better to keep to old-established ways. And that 'Helping Hands Society' of his is a curious omnium gatherum affair. I am told he's got all sorts and conditions of people in it, Unitarians, Socialists, Knights of Labor, Agnostics!"
"I don't think-it's quite so bad as that!" Nora exclaimed, in amaze.
"Well, I'm told that this agitator, this Roland Graeme, actually belongs to it, and I believe he's a rank agnostic, if not an atheist."
"Oh, I am sure he can't be an atheist!" said Nora.
"An agnostic then, at any rate! Archer told me so. After all, there isn't much to choose between them. The atheist will tell you there's no God—the agnostic, that he doesn't know of one. Practically, there's no difference."
Nora was a good deal shocked. To her, as to the large majority of earnest, reverent Christians, the position of an "agnostic" implied something very terrible—a wilful throwing away of truth and walking in darkness. To think of the gentle, generous, enthusiastic Roland as such a one, seemed to her impossible. Presently she said, rather timidly:
"Mr. Graeme seems to me to have a large share of the Christian spirit."
"Oh, no doubt—no doubt," said Mr Chillingworth, impatiently, "thanks to his Christian education! 'Train up a child in the way he should go'—you know. But there is no class so dangerous as these half Christian agnostics, regular wolves in sheep's clothing! They go about, putting people off their guard by plausible talk, and then ensnare them unawares. I consider that young man's influence most dangerous to this community I beg you to listen to him as little as possible!"