"They serve the same purpose," she said; "but I am a strong believer in mesmeric influence, in the force of personality. Other things being equal, a voice impresses me much more than a printed page. Oh, I don't place sermons in a unique position by any means, or even sermons and books. It is very much a question of keeping 'a border of pinks round the potato-patch.' All the endless things that open up our horizon might be classed together; they would differ only as to the direction in which they open up the horizon. It is quite true in one sense that I go to church for the same reason that I go to the theatre—to keep myself from getting worldly; but a good sermon—I say a good sermon—has a more direct bearing on the ordinary affairs of life. In fact, it helps us to see not only the ideal, but, as I said before, the ideal in the actual."
"I think I see what you mean, although theatres are not commonly supposed to serve the purpose of keeping one unspotted from the world."
"It seems to me that one can get worldly over anything, from ballet-dancing to sweeping a room, if one does not see beyond it. There is another side to the 'trivial round, the common task' question, true and beautiful as Keble's poem is. Worldliness seems to me to be entirely a question of getting into a rut."
"All you say is very fine," he said; "but, with the curious provincialism of a Londoner—seen from the Anglo-Indian point of view—you are assuming that one has an unlimited number of preachers from whom to choose. What would you do if you were thrown back on one poor specimen of the 'fag end of the clergy'?"
Mona raised her eyes in surprise.
"I should never dream of going to church at all," she said, "unless there was something to be gained from the service."
"And suppose you were in India, where the lives of the English do not exactly tend to bear out the teaching of the missionaries?"
"I should remember that it must be very poor teaching which would be borne out by hypocrisy on my part."
"You would not go for the sake of example?"
"Most assuredly not. I don't believe in conscious influence."