Then she turned her clear eyes on David. "You prefer it in the sky," she said. "I quite agree with you. A woman's flesh savours too much of the world and the devil, to be a resting-place for stars. It can have no possible connection with ideals."
She spoke so bitterly, that David's tender heart rose up in arms.
"True, I prefer it in the sky," he said, "and I prefer it not of diamonds. But I do not like to hear you speak so of—of your body. It seems to me too perfectly beautiful to be thus relegated to a lower sphere; not because it is not flesh; but because, though flesh, it clothes a radiant soul. The mortal body is but the garment of the immortal soul. The soul, in mounting, lifts the body with it."
"I do not agree with you," said Diana. "I loathe bodies; my own, no less than other people's. And how little we know of our souls. I am afraid I shall shock you, Cousin David, but a favourite theory of mine is: that only a certain number of people have any souls at all. I have always maintained that the heathen have no souls."
David's deep eyes gleamed.
"The young natives of Uganda," he said, "sooner than give up their new-found faith, sooner than deny the Lord Who had bought them, walked calmly to the stake, and were slowly roasted by fire; their limbs, while they yet lived, being hacked off, one by one, and thrown into the flames. Their holy courage never failed; their last articulate words were utterances of faith and praise. Surely bodies would hardly go through so much, unless souls—strong immortal souls—dwelt within them."
"True," said Diana, softly. "Cousin David, I apologise. And I wonder how many of us would stand such a soul-test as slow-fire. I can't quite imagine Chappie, seated on a gridiron, singing hymns! Can you?"
"We must not judge another," said David, rather stiffly. "Conditions of martyrdom, produced the noble army of martyrs. Why should not Mrs. Vane, if placed in those conditions, rise to the occasion?"
"I am certain she would," said Diana. "She would rise quite rapidly,—if the occasion were a gridiron."