She shook her head. “It would n’t do. You would be horrified to learn even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of evil displayed in my very mistakes.”
“Well, then,” said Rowland, “I will ask no questions. But, at a venture, I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very good.”
“Can it be, can it be,” she asked, “that you too are trying to flatter me? I thought you and I had fallen, from the first, into rather a truth-speaking vein.”
“Oh, I have not abandoned it!” said Rowland; and he determined, since he had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage farther. The opportunity seemed excellent. But while he was hesitating as to just how to begin, the young girl said, bending forward and clasping her hands in her lap, “Please tell me about your religion.”
“Tell you about it? I can’t!” said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.
She flushed a little. “Is it such a mighty mystery it cannot be put into words, nor communicated to my base ears?”
“It is simply a sentiment that makes part of my life, and I can’t detach myself from it sufficiently to talk about it.”
“Religion, it seems to me, should be eloquent and aggressive. It should wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to sway all hearts!”
“One’s religion takes the color of one’s general disposition. I am not aggressive, and certainly I am not eloquent.”
“Beware, then, of finding yourself confronted with doubt and despair! I am sure that doubt, at times, and the bitterness that comes of it, can be terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge them in this life?”