"Do you honestly believe," he rejoined, speaking very earnestly, intent on shaking her faith, if that were possible, "that Whoever or Whatever was big enough to put the stars in the sky is small enough to take revenge forever on a tiny little molecule like you—or me? Do you honestly suppose that after you are dead, perhaps a long time dead, this mighty God will hunt for you through all the heavens, and when he has found you, you poor little atom of a dead dot, that he will torment and pester you forever and ever because you had once for a space no longer than the wink of an eye acted according to the nature he gave you? If that is your God, he has put nothing in his universe as cruel as Himself."
She frowned in a puzzled way for a few seconds, looking at him with an odd little wide-eyed stare, then shook her head slowly.
"Yes," said he in answer. "Some day you will take your life in your own hands and use it. You're not the stuff they make nuns out of. There's too much vitality in you.
"How old are you?" he asked suddenly.
"Twenty-six."
"Twenty-six and ready to quit? I don't believe it."
"You don't understand, Mason," she answered, "you can't. You're not a Catholic. Catholicism is different from all other creeds. It is not just something you think and argue about, but it has you—you belong to it; it is as much a part of you as your blood and bones." There was a finality in her voice, a resignation of self, which bespoke the vast accumulated will of the Church operating upon and through her.
Stevens knew suddenly that she was not an individualized woman in the same sense that he was an individualized man, with the private possibility of doing what he pleased so long as he did not interfere with the private possibilities of others; he realized that in certain important intimate matters such as the one which had arisen between them she was without power of decision, the decision having been made for her many centuries ago; and he felt the awe which comes to every man when first he is confronted by the Roman Catholic Church.
"You mean there is no way out of it—but death?—your husband's death?" His self-confidence seemed to have departed as if he, too, had met fate in the road.
"Yes," she answered gently, "that is the only way." And then she smiled with some little effort, but still she smiled, for she detested gloom on her day off. "Oh, Mason," said she, "why wasn't grandpa a Swede?"