He didn't know; hadn't thought about it. Perhaps—perhaps not.
"I don't believe you would," was her opinion. "You've absorbed a certain amount of atmosphere that has poisoned you in so far as living elsewhere is concerned. I shouldn't be at all surprised, either, to learn that you think Indian and Chinese religions superior to ours?"
"Aren't they?"
"Are they?"
"You, yourself, spoke a few days ago, if I remember correctly, of the philosophies and doctrines of the East—doctrines that have nothing to do with mints or stock-exchanges, as you expressed it."
"Yes. But now I'm comparing the principles of religion—those adopted by our thinkers and real philosophers. Oh, we have our nobler types, who haven't been blinded by earth-dust! It may be a taint of the flesh in me, but I can't adjust myself to the belief that the ascetics and shrivelled yogis that I've seen are the proper habitations for pure spirituality. If the manifestation isn't wholesome, how can the inner conception be? You wouldn't fill an unclean vessel with holy water, would you? It's the methods and instruments through which the East voices its philosophies that I rebel against. That which mutilates, or even neglects, the body, can't be a true religion.... But really, I'm afraid I'm getting beyond my depth. What I originally intended to say is this: occultism is dangerous to those of the West, minds and bodies of a different substance than those of the Orient. I knew a man who became interested in theosophy. After a time he entered some secret cult that had a temple in the Himalayas. It grew to be an obsession, and now ... well, he tried to touch flames that were not conceived for man-tampering and they seared him."
Trent chuckled. "In other words," he said, "you're afraid I'm a Buddhist or a Mohammedan at heart, or, if by good fortune I'm not, you wish to warn me against exotic religions." Another chuckle. "It's flattering. What other conclusions have you drawn?"
"Just at present," she responded, smiling maliciously, "I think you're horrid."
He sobered. "Please go on. It's like looking into your house from the neighbor's window. I'm really interested."
"Or curious? Men who have not ventured into matrimony are, as a rule, inquisitive. And that suggests another question. It seems to me that one alone would be much more receptive to these"—she smiled—"these paganisms than one in union with another. Loneliness—that is, isolation—is food for heresies."