Morelli sat perched on the highest peak of the knoll with his legs crossed beneath him. He was at his very best; gay, laughing, throwing the pine needles like a child into the air, singing a little song.
“Come here, my dear, and talk to me.” He made way for her beside him. “Everything is singing to-day. There is a bird in a tree above us who has just told me how happy he is. I hope you are happy, my dear.”
“Yes, father, very.” She gave a little sigh of satisfaction and lay back on the grass at his side.
“Well, don’t be ashamed of showing it. Have your feelings and show them. Never mind what they are, but don’t cover them as though you were afraid that they would catch cold. Don’t mind feeling intensely, hurting intensely, loving intensely. It is a world of emotion, not of sham.”
She never paid any very deep attention when he talked about rules of life. Existence seemed to her, at present, such an easy affair that rules weren’t necessary; people made such a bother.
She lay back and stared straight into the heart of the sky. Two little clouds, like pillows, bulged against the blue; the hard sharp line of the pines cut into space, and they moved together slowly like the soft opening and closing of a fan.
“I knew a place once like this,” said Morelli. “It was in Greece. A green hill overlooking the sea, and on it a white statue; they came to worship their god there.”
“What is this talk of God?” she asked him, resting on one elbow and looking up at him. “You have never told me, father, but of course I have read and have heard people talk. Who is God?”
She asked it with only a very languid interest. She had never speculated at all about the future. The world was so wonderful, and there were such a number of things all around her to think about, that discussion about something that would affect her at the end of her life, when all the world was dark and she was old and helpless, seemed absurd. She would want the end to come then, when she was deaf and blind and cold; she would not spoil the young colour and intensity of her life by thinking about it. But with the sudden entrance of Tony the question came forward again. They would not live for ever; life seemed very long to her, but the time must come when they would die. And then? Who was this God? Would He see to it that she and Tony were together afterwards? If so, she would worship Him; she would bring Him flowers, and light candles as Miss Minns did. As she sat there and heard the woods and the sea she thought that the answer must be somewhere in them. He must have made this colour and sound, and, if that were so, He could not be unkind. She watched the two clouds; they had swollen into the shape of bowls, their colour was pale cream, and the sun struck their outer edges into a very faint gold.
“Who is God?” she said again.