“I don’t want Mrs. Ascher this time. She’d be in the way. She’s a charming woman, of course, though she does bore me a bit about music and talks of her soul.”
“Good Heavens!” I said. “You haven’t been discussing religion with her, surely. I didn’t think you’d do a thing like that, Gorman. You oughtn’t to.”
“Never mentioned religion to her in my life. Nothing would induce me to. For one thing I don’t believe she has any.”
“You’re a Roman Catholic yourself, aren’t you?”
“Well,” said Gorman, “I don’t know that I can say that I am exactly; but I’m not a Protestant or a Jew. But that’s nothing to do with it. Mrs. Ascher doesn’t talk about her soul in a religious way. In fact—I don’t know if you’ll understand, but what she means by a soul is something quite different, not the same sort of soul.”
I understood perfectly. I have met several women of Mrs. Ascher’s kind. They are rather boastful about their souls and even talk of saving or losing them. But they do not mean what one of Gorman’s priests would mean, or what my poor father, who was a strongly evangelical Protestant, meant by the phrases.
“We are not accustomed to souls like hers in Ireland. We only go in for the commonplace, old-fashioned sort.”
Gorman smiled.
“She wouldn’t be seen with one of them about her,” he said. “They’re vulgar things. Everybody has one.”
“Soul or no soul,” I said, “you ought to invite Mrs. Ascher to your party. Why not do the civil thing?”