“Cassidy’s doctrinal tracts, for instance?” The query had a tinge of sarcasm.
She bit her lips. “You have no idea of reverence for anything. I might have guessed it that night at Newstead and how you treated him! You speak your views on religion—views that I hate—openly, anywhere. You write and print them, too, in your verse!”
“You are frank,” he said; “let me be the same. What my brain conceives my hand shall write. If I valued fame, I should flatter received opinions. That I have never done! I cannot and will not give the lie to my doubts, come what may.”
“What right have you to have those doubts?” Her anger was rising full-fledged, and bitter-winged with malice. “Why do you set yourself against all that is best? What do you believe in that is good, I should like to know?”
“I abhor books of religion,” he responded steadily, “and the blasphemous notions of sectaries. I have no belief in their absurd heresies and Thirty-nine Articles. I feel joy in all beautiful and sublime things. But I hate convention and cant and lay-figure virtue, and shall go on hating them to the end of the chapter.”
“To the end of the chapter!” she echoed. “You mean to do nothing more—to think of nothing but scribbling pretty lines on paper and making a mystery of yourself! What is our life to be together? What did you marry me for?”
“Bella!” The word was almost a cry. “I married you for faith, not for creeds! I am as I have always been—I have concealed nothing. I married you for sympathy and understanding! I know I am not like other men—but I tried to make you love and understand me!—I tried! Why did you marry me?”
For an instant the real pain in the appeal seemed to cleave through her icy demeanor and she made an involuntary movement. But as she hesitated, Fletcher knocked at the door:
“Mr. Sheridan, my lord, come to take you to Drury Lane.”
The words congealed the softer feeling. As the valet withdrew, she turned upon her husband.