Moultrie allowed a deep silence to follow her words. Then he drew a long breath.
"I think I should like that," he said. "Does it answer all your questions?"
"All! Every one of them!" she answered, with the almost too eager manner of the young believer in Christian Science. But an eagerness to impart good news and to relieve apparent distress should be readily forgiven by a self-loving humanity. Curiously, however, the most blatant ego is generally affronted by it.
"I was raised a Baptist," he said, reluctantly, "but I reckon I never was a very good one, for I never got any peace from it."
"My religion gives peace."
"And my prayers were never answered."
"My religion answers prayers."
"Not even when I lifted my heart to God in earnest pleading to spare my brother the unhappiness I felt sure would follow his marriage. How I prayed to be in time to prevent it! God never heard me!"
"My religion holds the answer to that unanswered prayer."
"Not even when I prayed, lying on the floor all night, for the life of my father."