"Very; she was the pencil sketch for Felicia."
"About how old?"
"It is difficult to tell. She is one of the women who are sixty in the sun and thirty in the shade, like the thermometer in spring. I should think she is really an easy five-and-forty, accelerated by limited means and an exacting conscience. She is always bothering about sins and draughts and things of that kind. I believe she thinks that everything you do will either make your soul too hot or your body too cold."
"You are severe on the excellent lady."
"I try not to be, because I think she is really good in her way; but her religion is such a dreadfully fussy kind of religion it makes me angry. It seems to caricature the whole thing. She appears to think that Christianity is a sort of menu of moral fancy-dishes, which one is bound to swallow in a certain prescribed order."
"Poor dear woman!"
"When people like Mrs. Herbert talk about religion," Elisabeth went on, "it is as bad as reducing the number of the fixed stars to pounds, shillings, and pence; just as it is when people talk about love who know nothing at all about it."
Christopher manfully repressed a smile. "Still, I have known quite intelligent persons do that. They make mistakes, I admit, but they don't know that they do; and so their ignorance is of the brand which the poet describes as bliss."
"People who have never been in love should never talk about it," Elisabeth sagely remarked.
"But, on the other hand, those who have been, as a rule, can't; so who is to conduct authorized conversations on this most interesting and instructive subject?"