"What is that you say about sin?"
Lady Jim's cunning made her shirk confession. "Nothing--oh, nothing," she said hurriedly; "only it seems to me that everything pleasant is a sin in your eyes."
"Dead Sea Fruit," replied Kaimes, earnestly; "fair to the eye, foul to the taste. If you turn devoutly to the spiritual, the material pleasures of this world lose their attractiveness."
"Perhaps," she said sceptically; "but many things goody-goody people of your sort shudder at are attractive. You can't deny that."
"I have no wish to. Satan always supplies us with rose-coloured spectacles, through which to contemplate his works."
Lady Jim rose and walked up and down the narrow limits of the room, twisting her hands in a nervous, hesitating way, quite unlike her usually calm, decisive self. "I wish you would not talk nonsense," she snapped; "it is absurd to believe in a personal devil."
"And in a possible hell also, I suppose you would say."
"Oh," she said carelessly, "scientists have explained that away."
"And the Inquisition of the middle ages denied that the earth went round the sun," said Kaimes, grimly; "but I understand that it does."
"Clever, but not convincing. What is the use of talking nursery theology and cheap science to me? What can you say that is likely to do me good?"