The tone of indifference with which the question was put was not lost upon Alice, but she was too much interested in the conversation to pay heed to it. She said:
'I read nearly all Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Browning—I think I like him better than all the poets! Do you know the scene at St. Praxed's?'
'Yes, of course; it is very fine. But I don't know that I ever cared much for Browning. Not only the verse, but the whole mind of the man is uncouth—yes, uncouth is the word I want. He is the Carlyle of Poetry. Have you ever read Carlyle?'
'Oh yes, I have read his French Revolution and his Life of Schiller, but that's all. I only came home from school last summer, and at school we never read anything. I couldn't get many new books down in Galway. There were, of course, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot in the library, but that was all. I once got a beautiful book from Dungory Castle. I wonder if you ever read it? It is called Madame Gervaisais. From the descriptions of Rome it almost seems to me that I have been there.'
'I know the book, but I didn't know a Catholic girl could admire it—and you are a Catholic, I presume?'
'I was brought up a Catholic.'
'It is one thing to be brought up a Catholic, and another to avoid doubting.'
'There can surely be no harm in doubting?'
'Not the least; but toward which side are you? Have you fallen into the soft feather-bed of agnosticism, or the thorny ditch of belief?'
'Why do you say "the soft feather-bed of agnosticism"?'