"Miss Hartill—you do believe in God?"
Clare shrugged her shoulders.
Louise stared at her appalled.
"If you don't believe in God——" she began slowly, and then stopped.
They sat a long while in silence.
Clare felt uncomfortable. She had not intended to express any opinion, to let her own attitude to religion appear. But Louise, with her sudden question, had forced one from her. After all, if Louise had begun to doubt and to inquire, no silence on Clare's part would stop her.... Every girl went through the phase—with Louise it had begun early, that was all.... Yet in her heart she knew that Louise, with her already overworked mind, should have been kept from the mental distress of religious doubt.... She knew that for some years she could have been so kept; that, as the mouth can eat what the body will not absorb, so, though her intelligence might have assimilated all the books she chose to read, her soul need not necessarily have been disturbed by them. Her acquired knowledge that the world is round need not have jostled her rule of thumb conviction that it is flat. Her interest in 'ologies and 'osophies could have lived comfortably enough, with her child's belief in four angels round her head, for another two or three years—strengthening, maturing years.
Clare knew her power. At a soothing word from her, Louise would have shelved her speculations, or at least have continued them impersonally. Clare could have guaranteed God to her. But Clare had shrugged her shoulders, and Louise had grown white—and she had felt like a murderess. Do children really take their religion so seriously?... After all, what real difference could it make to Louise?... She, Clare, had been glad to be rid of her clogging and irrational beliefs.... Louise, too, when she recovered from the shock, would enjoy the sense of freedom and self-respect.... If Louise talked like a girl of eighteen she could not be expected to receive the careful handling you gave a child of twelve.... Anyhow, it was done now....
Suddenly and persuasively she began to talk to Louise. She touched gently on the history, the growth and inevitable decay of all religions—the contrasting immutability of the underlying code of ethics, upon which they, one and all, were founded. She told her vivid little stories of the religious struggles of the centuries, had her breathless over the death of Socrates, nailed up for her anew the ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. Exerting all her powers, all her knowledge, all her descriptive and dramatic skill, to charm away one child's distress, Clare was, for an hour, a woman transformed, sound and honey-sweet. Against all that happened later, she could at least put the one hour, when, remorsefully, she had given Louise of the best that was in her.
Incidentally, she delivered to her audience of one the most brilliant lecture of her career. Later she wrote down what she remembered of it, and it became the foundation for her monograph on religions that was to become a minor classic. Its success was immediate—that was typical of Clare—but she never wrote another line. That also was typical of Clare. It bored her to repeat a triumph.
She soon had Louise happy again: it was not in Louise to stick to the high-road of her own thoughts, with Miss Hartill opening gates to fairyland at every sentence. Clare kept her for the rest of the evening, and took her home at last, weighed down by her parcel of books, sleepy from the effects of excitement and happiness. She poured out her incoherent thanks as they waited on the doorstep of her home. There had never been such a Christmas—she had never had such a glorious time—she couldn't thank Miss Hartill properly if she talked till next Christmas came.