"Well, you shall show me some of these temples of yours about the week after next, when I have packed you off down home, and have speedily followed you there."
"There are plenty such temples around here," I answered. "We might go to-day."
"Yes, but we are going to church this morning."
"Why? You have just agreed with me that you gain nothing from listening to a man who is paid so much a year to explain to you something of which he knows nothing."
"Good heavens, child! What a sentence from the mouth of a babe! I go to church because it is good form."
"Then you are the one who needs a missionary."
"Well, I'll promise to quit going altogether after we are married. I shall expect you and mother and Evelyn to keep up the appearance of respectability for the family."
"Listen, Richard," I said, standing close to him and lowering my voice so that I might not be overheard. "I may as well tell you now, in the beginning, that I could never be a 'religious' woman the way your mother is. Our ideas on the subject are wholly different. I have a religion, but your conventional orthodoxy has little to do with it. And I shall not pretend that it has."
"Ann! I believe I have fallen in love with a little reformer. Will you be so good, madam, as to set forth your views?" He spoke in the lightest tone of jest. Evidently he had no idea that a woman possessed such a thing as views.
"Oh, it is a vague sort of belief; a dawning light of faith in the Eternal Wisdom, against which orthodoxy seems like a harsh glare which makes you squint your eyes."