"I do not find it so," responded the Abbe, complacently looking at a fine diamond ring that glittered on the little finger of his plump white hand, "It is a creed which impresses upon us the virtue of being happy during the present moment, no matter what the next may bring. Let each man enjoy himself according to his temperament and capabilities. Do not impose bounds upon him—give him his liberty. Let him alone. Do not try to bamboozle him with the idea that there is a God looking after him. So will he be spared much disappointment and useless blasphemy. If he makes his own affairs unpleasant in this world', he will not be able to lift up his hands to the innocent skies, which are only composed of pure ether, and blame an impossible Large Person sitting up there who can have no part in circumstances which are entirely unknown outside the earth's ridiculously small orbit."
He smiled kindly as he spoke, and looked paternally at "the Sovrani," who flushed with a sudden warmth that sent a wave of pale rose over her face, and made her cheeks the colour of the flower she wore.
"How cruel you are!" she said,—"How cold—how didactic! You would give each man his freedom according to habit and temperament,—no matter whether such habit and temperament led to crime or otherwise,—you would impose upon him no creed,—no belief in anything higher than himself,—and yet—you remain in the Church!"
The Abbe laughed softly.
"Chere Sovrani! You are angry—deliciously angry! Impulsively, enthusiastically, beautifully vexed with me! I like to see you so,—you are a woman of remarkable genius, and yet you are quite a little child in heart,—a positive child, with beliefs and hopes! I should not wonder if you even believed that love itself is eternal!—that most passing of phantoms!—yes—and you exclaim against me because I venture to think for myself? It is appalling that I should think for myself and yet remain in the Church? My dear lady, you might just as well, after unravelling the dirty entanglement of the Dreyfus case, have turned upon our late friend Faure and exclaimed 'And yet you remained President!'"
Angela's violet eyes glowed.
"He was not allowed to remain President," she said.
"No, he was not. He died. Certainly! And I know you think he would not have died if he had done his best to clear the character of an innocent man. To women of your type, it always seems as if God—the Large Person up above—stepped in exactly at the right moment. It would really appear as if it were so at times. But such things are mere coincidences."
"I do not believe in coincidences," said Angela decisively, "I do not believe in 'chance' or 'luck', or what you call 'fortuitous' haphazard arrangements of any sort. I think everything is planned by law from the beginning; even to the particular direction in which a grain of dust floats through space. It is all mathematical and exact. And the moving Spirit—the Divine Centre of things, whom I call God,—cannot dislodge or alter one particle of the majestic system without involving the whole in complete catastrophe. It is our mistake to 'chance' things—at least, so I think. And if I exclaim against you and say,—"Why do you remain in the Church?' it is because I cannot understand a man of conscience and intellect outwardly professing one thing while inwardly he means another. Because God will take him in the end at his own interior valuation, not at his outward seeming."
"Uncomfortable, if true," said the Abbe, still smiling. "When one has been at infinite pains all one's life to present a charmingly virtuous and noble aspect to the world, it would be indeed distressing if at the last moment one were obliged to lift the mask . . ."