“Hate them? Why, dear child?” asked Miss Barbara, who had heard through the sigh of her held-down pedal.
“I don’t want to lose myself,” said Eppie. “But I didn’t mean that I wanted you to stop, Aunt Barbara. Do go on. I love to hear you sing, however much I disapprove of the words.”
But Miss Barbara, clasping and unclasping her hands a little nervously, and evidently finding the moment too propitious to be passed over, backed as she was by an ally, rose and came to them.
“That is the very point you are so mistaken about, dear. It’s the self, you know, that keeps us from love.”
“It’s the self that makes love possible,” said Eppie, taking her hand and looking up at her. “Do you want to lose me, Aunt Barbara? If you lose yourself you will have to lose me too, you know.”
Miss Barbara stood perplexed but not at all convinced by these subtleties, turning mild eyes of query upon Gavan and evidently expecting him to furnish the obvious retort.
“We will all be at one with God,” she reverently said at length, finding that her ally left the defense to her.
Eppie met this large retort cheerfully. “You can’t love God unless you have a self to love him with. I know what you mean, and perhaps I agree with what you really mean; but I want to correct your Buddhistic tendencies and to keep you a good Christian.”
“I humbly hope I’m that. You shouldn’t jest on such subjects, Eppie dear.”
“I’m not one bit jesting,” Eppie protested. And now Gavan asked, while Miss Barbara looked gratefully at him, sure of his backing, though she might not quite be able to understand his methods, “Are they such different creeds?”