“My dear, nobody forgets him,” Mrs. Price reassured her. “He was tremendously real, I’m sure, and we all liked him, though, as Edward said at dinner, he seemed a little—a little——”
“Fogged on religion,” chimed in Fanny cheerfully. “So many men are, mama, and I’m sure Overton was as nice as he could be. When I was a child, he used to give me candy—didn’t he, Di?”
“A sure way to win your heart!” retorted Diane, smiling. “I don’t think I’m as orthodox as you are, Cousin Julia,” she added calmly. “There are greater things in heaven and earth than mere formalism.”
“Diane!” breathed her shocked relative.
“Oh, I sha’n’t dispute it with you!” Diane went on easily; “but you mustn’t think that a man like Simon Overton hadn’t a soul great enough to have its own faith. I know he had it.”
“I’m sure he did,” agreed Fanny warmly. “Didn’t you hear what Mr. Faunce said—that Overton was one of the best friends a man ever had? Isn’t that a great tribute—from a man like Faunce, too?”
Diane assented, leaning farther back in her corner. At the moment she could not quite command her voice. Overton’s face seemed to rise before her as she had seen it last—manly and tender and kindled with high hope. How could she think of it veiled in the mist and chill of a frozen death, like a light suddenly quenched in a tempest, or a star receding into the clouds of the infinite?
“No, I’m not a formalist,” she said with sudden passion, as if her thoughts must find an outlet in words; “but I do believe in the immortal soul. It isn’t possible that a man’s life, going out as it does like—like a candle in the wind, leaves nothing whatever behind, nothing to reach up to the heights that he sought.”
“Of course you believe in the soul!” Mrs. Price was immeasurably startled. Her round eyes grew rounder than ever. “How can you express a doubt of it, Diane?”
“Di hasn’t really,” argued Fanny, interfering between the two. “She’s off on one of her tangents, that’s all. She can’t get the awful part of it out of her head. Wasn’t it touching, mama, the way Faunce couldn’t even speak of Overton’s death?”