“All that is true in it has been said a hundred times; the rest is as shallow, as trivial as possible.”
She yielded to his pull and sat down on the chair-arm.
“He takes a very crude view of religion,” Maurice owned. “One doesn’t approach it from that point of view nowadays; the whole ground of contest has been shifted.”
“Exactly. Why didn’t you tell him so?”
“Tell him, dearest? Hurt him? How could I be so brutal? Wouldn’t that have hurt you?”
“Not so much as your encouraging him to do a thing that you know to be foolish,” said Felicia, looking over Maurice’s head and feeling that vexation could easily express itself in tears. With a quick change of tone, looking up in sudden alarm at the eyes that had not met his, he said: “You are displeased with me?”
Alarm was such a new note that Felicia’s breast echoed it, transforming it to instant compunction. Her eyes dropped to his.
“Have I been horrid? I think I was displeased.”
“Please forgive me,” said Maurice gently, a smile of relief answering her smile and irradiating his face; “I thought you would like me to please him, to encourage him; upon my word I did.”
“I know. I know you did it for me. But I don’t like you to do anything that isn’t absolutely——“