They paused at a little distance, and leaning upon the stone balustrade, looked down upon the town or at the plain beyond, or across the Neckar at the hills of the Philosophenweg. Here Leonard told his foreign cousin the story of the first Eliphalet.
"A strange story," was her comment.
"A noble story," he corrected.
"All sacrifice is noble. I know a woman in extreme poverty who gave ten francs to regild a tawdry statue of the Virgin."
"Deplorable!" exclaimed Leonard severely.
"Pitiful, rather. Consider what the sum was to her! The needs she sacrificed—and for what?"
"Sacrifice wasted, and degradingly wasted."
"Wasted, doubtless; but why degradingly?"
"Granted that your poor woman was sincere"—which, however, the speaker seemed to grant but grudgingly—"the sacrifice was still degrading in that it was made to superstition."
She smiled. "What would my poor woman say of Grandfather Eliphalet?"