“The people here do not think; they merely gossip,” he went on. “They have no ideas, no purely mental conceptions. They do not know what is going on in the mind of the world, how men’s views of life are changing and broadening.”
She did not follow him, but she felt the wind of the world beneath her wing.
“Two years here made no difference. You don’t grow. You don’t develop. But away in a university, where your business is to get what’s going and learn to think, two years change a man. I am a stranger here now. My own father and mother do not know me.”
“Oh, George, yes, they do!” she exclaimed consolingly.
Then she caught his eye and perceived that he was in no need of consolation. He was boasting, prouder than otherwise of being this stranger. “It’s a fact; they make me feel like a whited sepulcher,” he complained.
“But you don’t,” she exclaimed loyally, but really in great trepidation lest he might be this awful thing.
“Of course not,” he returned, pleased to have excited her anxiety. “But what would my father think if he knew I am interested in socialism, that my best friends in the university are radicals?”
She was not competent to express an opinion. She was not skilled in politics.
“And what would my mother think if she knew that I no longer accept the Scriptures literally as she does, as you all do in this town; that I know the Bible to be fragments of history and tradition, much of it mythical, the priestly literature of the Jews, gathered from dreams and hearsay, and interpreted to control the lives and liberties of men.”
“Oh, George! you must not say such things. You are a member of the church. I remember the Sunday morning when you were baptized.”