"Ah! my dear Miss Dares, the love between man and woman is entitled to no more respect than the law of gravitation. Both belong to the great unknown scheme. We may shake our heads in transcendental disapprobation, but it is quite useless. The loftiest affection of the human heart is no more important and no more mysterious than the question of why Newton's apple fell from the tree or why a plant buds in spring. All causes are unknown, and to seek their solution is to idly grope."
Cora was regarding Pauline, as the latter finished, with a look full of sad interest. "You speak like ... like some one whom we both know," she said hesitatingly. "You speak as if you did not believe in God."
"I do not disbelieve in God," quickly answered Pauline. "The carelessly-applied term of 'atheist' is to my thinking a name fit only for some pitiable braggart. He who denies the existence of a God is of no account among people of sense; but he who says, 'I am ignorant of all that concerns the conceivability of a God' has full right to express such ignorance."
Cora slowly inclined her head. "That is the way I have heard him talk," she said, almost musingly. Then she gave a quick glance straight into Pauline's watchful eyes. "I—I mean," she added, confusedly, as if she had betrayed herself into avowing some secret reflection, "that Mr. Kindelon has more than once spoken in a similar way."
"Mr. Kindelon?" replied Pauline, with a gentle, peculiar, interrogative emphasis. "And did you agree with him?"
"No," swiftly answered Cora. "I have a faith that he cannot shake—that no one can shake! But he has not tried to do so; I must render him that justice."
Pauline turned away, with a faint laugh. "The wise men, who have thought and therefore doubted," she returned, "are often fond of orthodoxy in the women whom they like. They think it picturesque."
She laughed again, and Cora's eyes followed her as she moved toward the pictures which she had previously been examining. "Let us change the subject," she went on, with a note of cold composure in her voice. "I see that you don't like rationalism.... Well, you are a poet, as your pictures tell me, and few poets like to do more than feel first and think afterward.... Are these pictures for sale, Miss Dares?"
Cora's answer came a trifle tardily. "Three of them," she said.
"Which three?" Pauline asked, somewhat carelessly, as it seemed.