"Your mother. Such a woman as that can, I think, enjoy feminine loveliness almost as much as a man."
"I have often heard my mother speak of Marion's good qualities, but not much of her loveliness. To me her great charm is her voice. She speaks musically."
"As one can fancy Melpomene did. Does she come here often?"
"Every day, I fancy;—but not generally when I am here. Not but what she and I are great friends. She will sometimes go with me into town on a Thursday morning, on her way to the meeting house."
"Lucky fellow!" Roden shrugged his shoulders as though conscious that any luck of that kind must come to him from another quarter, if it came at all.
"What does she talk about?"
"Religion generally."
"And you?"
"Anything else, if she will allow me. She would wish to convert me. I am not at all anxious to convert her, really believing that she is very well as she is."
"Yes," said Hampstead; "that is the worst of what we are apt to call advanced opinions. With all my self-assurance I never dare to tamper with the religious opinions of those who are younger or weaker than myself. I feel that they at any rate are safe if they are in earnest. No one, I think, has ever been put in danger by believing Christ to be a God."