When he dropped in at Alice's a few days later he found her sitting, hot-cheeked and absorbed, over Strauss's Life of Jesus.
"Just fancy," she said, holding up her forehead for his kiss, "that young poodle of yours is making me take notice. He gives me intellectual nuts to crack. It's strange how this young generation—"
"I beg of you, Alice," he interrupted her, "you are only a very few years his senior."
"That may be so," she answered, "but the little education I have derives from another epoch…. I am, metaphysically, as unexacting as the people of your generation. A certain fogless freedom of thought seemed to me until to-day the highest point of human development."
"And Fritz von Ehrenberg, student of agriculture, has converted you to a kind of thoughtful religiosity?" he asked, smiling good-naturedly.
In her zeal she wasn't even aware of his irony.
"We're not going to give in so easily…. But it is strange what an impression is made on one by a current of strong and natural feeling…. This young fellow comes to me and says: 'There is a God, for I feel Him and I need Him. Prove the contrary if you can.' … Well, so I set about proving the contrary to him. But our poor negations have become so glib that one has forgotten the reasons for them. Finally he defeated me along the whole line … so I sat down at once and began to study up … just as one would polish rusty weapons … Bible criticism and DuBois-Reymond and 'Force and Matter' and all the things that are traditionally irrefutable."
"And that amuses you?" he asked compassionately.
A theoretical indignation took hold of her that always amused him greatly.
"Does it amuse me? Are such things proper subjects for amusement? Surely you must use other expressions, Richard, when one is concerned for the most sacred goods of humanity…."