“Yes,” said Crowdie, “they are rather important things. But I don’t think that there are so many people who deny the existence of the soul as people who want to satisfy their curiosity about it, by getting a glimpse at it. Hester and I dine out a good deal—people are very kind, and always ask us to dinners because they know I can’t go out to late parties on account of my work—so we are always dining out; and we were saying only to-day that at nine-tenths of the dinners we go to the conversation sooner or later turns on the soul, or psychical research, or Buddhism, or ghosts, or something of the sort. It’s odd, isn’t it, that there should be so much talk about those things just now? I think it shows a kind of general curiosity. Everybody wants to get hold of a soul and study its habits, as though it were an ornithorynchus or some queer animal—it is strange, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, suddenly joining in the conversation. “If you once cut loose from your own form of belief there’s no particular reason why you should be satisfied with that of any one else. If a man leaves his house without an object there’s nothing to make him go in one direction rather than in another.”
“So far as that is concerned, I agree with you,” said Alexander Junior.
“There is truth to direct him,” observed the philanthropist.
“And there is beauty,” said Crowdie, turning his head towards Mrs. Lauderdale and his eyes towards Katharine.
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed the latter. “If you are going to jumble the soul, and art, and everything, all together, there are lots of things to lead one. Where does beauty lead you, Mr. Crowdie?”
“To imagine a vain thing,” answered the painter with a soft laugh. “It also leads me to try and copy it, with what I imagine it means, and I don’t always succeed.”
“I hope you’ll succeed if you paint my daughter’s portrait,” remarked Alexander Junior.
“No,” Crowdie replied thoughtfully, and looking at Katharine quite directly now. “I shan’t succeed, but if Miss Lauderdale will let me try, I’ll promise to do my very best. Will you, Miss Lauderdale? Your father said he thought you would have no objection.”
“I said you would, Katharine, and I said nothing about objections,” said her father, who loved accurate statements.