“You find me intolerant!” he exclaimed, half-ironically. Never before had such an adjective been presented to his strong sense of his own impartiality, his detached rationalism.
“Not exactly. Only, I’m afraid—a little bit of a prig.”
She uttered the strange, unimposing accusation, not rudely, not unkindly, but almost mournfully.
“Christianity has been accused of intolerance very often, and with only too much reason, but those outside the Churches, who frankly claim to be agnostic, often seem to me to be the most intolerant of all, of what they look upon as superstition. Why should you despise my father for beliefs that have led him to lead an honourable life, and that have given him courage to bear his many sorrows?”
“You have said, yourself, that the facing of facts means freedom. I can see no freedom, and therefore no beauty, in living in illusion.”
“Not for yourself, perhaps. Illusions could never be anything but conscious, for you.”
“Nor for yourself, Lucilla,” he retorted swiftly.
“But how does that entitle us to despise another for holding them?” she demanded, quite as swiftly. Nevertheless Owen detected a lessening of severity, in so far as she had coupled them together in her speech.
“Tonight,” he said gravely, “I admired your father with all my heart.”
“I’m glad.”