“To you—do you believe in that sort of conversion? Do you think that something can happen to you suddenly like that which changes you?”
“I can’t help believing it. How can I say that such things do not happen? I stake my life on such possibilities.”
“The whole thing seems so irrational to me,” said Tom. “In anything else, a man’s life is not changed by a little thing of that sort. And then the banking account——”
“Well, take an instance in your own line,” said Markham. “Can’t you imagine a modern artist who looks at a Raphael for the first time becoming a convert to that style of art?”
“That’s quite different,” said Tom. “These people have probably been brought up in these beliefs; the idea is not a new one to them. No doubt it came home with more force at such a moment. It is like a man who had been looking at Raphaels all his life, and caring nothing for them, being suddenly convinced by one of them. That doesn’t seem to me likely.”
“You may be right, I can’t say, for you know more of the subject than I. But what right have you to say that a thing doesn’t seem likely in a matter of which, as you said, you know nothing?”
“That’s true,” said Tom, “I do know nothing of it. But who does?”
“The probability is, that people who have thought about it know more than those who haven’t.”
Tom got up, and began to walk up and down the room.
“Well, I want to know, but how can I? If I didn’t feel an interest in it, I shouldn’t have come to talk about it. But I am altogether at sea. I wasn’t brought up in a religious household. My father never speaks of such things. At school I had to read the Bible, chiefly the Acts, like any other school lesson. I was confirmed as a matter of course. If you are not religiously minded, how can you become religious? If a man is not literary, you don’t expect him to feel any interest in books.”