Doctor Stoddard continued to make other polite inquiries, but in the end the original question came to the fore again.
"I hope," he hazarded, upon leaving, "that you will ponder seriously the spiritual side of your marriage. One should think twice before deserting the faith of one's fathers. I cannot fancy that Doctor Danilo will expect you to make the supreme sacrifice of being married out of your own fold."
After he had gone she felt uncomfortable. She had lost all sense of the authority with which Doctor Stoddard felt himself invested, but in an intangible way he did remain the symbol of those things unseen which made faith in life possible. And somehow his presence revived the old hopes as well as the exquisite spiritual fears of childhood. She had not been trained to refresh a soul wearied by sophistication by the simple act of lighting a taper before a holy image, and she knew that this never could be her portion. But Doctor Stoddard's presence itself gave her a very real idea of what Danilo had felt when he had set up his little name-day altar in the Robson dwelling. One could deny the precise terms of one's inbred faith, but it would still remain the most tangible clue to a larger hope—the slender thread which guided one through the maze.
Only one other person raised the question of what form of ceremony Claire had decided upon for her wedding, and curiously enough that person was Nellie Whitehead Holmes.
"I say, Robson," she flung out one day, "I hope you ain't going to stand for any three-ringed circus stuff when you get hitched. Just you insist on a straight old-fashioned get-away ... in plain English."
Claire made no reply and, Nellie, searching her friend's face sharply, said, with no attempt to conceal her panic:
"You ain't thinking of changing your religion, are you?"
Claire smiled. "Well, why not? I'm changing my name. And after all...."
"Claire Robson, don't be a fool!... Why, I wouldn't change my religion for the best man in the world!"
"No? And just what is your religion, Nell?"