"Are you quite sure that you would do so?"
"Pray, what do you mean by that?"
"Only that you continually teach him things that you yourself cannot possibly believe."
"What are you driving at?" He got very red; for he felt that this was the beginning of an explanation.
"I have often thought of speaking to you of this," she said, "and now the right moment has come. You surely don't believe that the world was created as it is now in six days, six thousand years ago, and that the story of the first man and woman, and the patriarchs is anything but a tradition? Likewise everything about Paradise. The world and human beings cannot have begun by being perfect. But this is what you teach the children, and of late even Edward."
He now walked up and down the room; she stood in the doorway between the room and the passage. Every time he approached her he gave her a decided, yes, even a look full of power; this was not the look of an evil conscience, she felt that. To show her in what spirit he wished to act, he stopped and said, quietly: "Shan't we sit down, Josephine?"
"No," answered she, "I did not come to stay."
"What you call a tradition," he said, "is the everlasting truth that God created everything and everyone, and that sin is a falling away from Him."
"Why not teach them in this wise, instead of by untrue pictures?"
"Children understand pictures best, Josephine."