Muriel's face hardened to that old expression her mother knew and dreaded from her schooldays.
"Mother, I don't intend to get married. The idea is repugnant to me."
"But, Muriel dear, you'll forgive me for saying that you cannot possibly know unless you're married if marriage is repugnant. I can assure you that it's impossible to say anything about it beforehand. Now I was brought up in complete ignorance of facts that I know you consider the merest commonplace of knowledge. I did have a few qualms, I admit; but in my case those qualms were due to ignorance."
Muriel thereupon sprang her mine.
"I hadn't intended to say anything about what I'm going to tell you until next autumn; but it doesn't seem fair to let you give dinner-parties under the delusion that you're likely to make a good match for me by doing so. Mother dear, I've decided to become a sister-of-mercy, and so marriage is utterly remote from my thoughts."
Mary stared at her daughter in amazement.
"Muriel! You extraordinary girl! I thought you hated Christianity. I thought you abominated clergymen. Why, I thought you were only interested in Socialism. I'd no conception that you were giving your mind to religion. The two things seem poles asunder."
"Do they, mother dear?" said Muriel with a smile. "But now I can't imagine any socialism worth having unless it is based upon religion. Equally I can't imagine any religion that isn't the inspiration of a true socialism. I've been thinking about this for a long time now—ever since I went to Midnight Mass last Christmas Eve. It reached me like an inspiration. The truth of it, I mean. My mind is absolutely made up."
Mary had never been so completely astonished in her life. She herself during these last months had wished once or twice that she had thought more about religion, so that now in her loneliness she might have possessed what was evidently to many women an absolute consolation for everything. But it was too late to begin, she had decided. And now here was Muriel wrapped up in religion apparently and taking it so seriously that she intended to become a sister-of-mercy.