And there was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done it.
But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love, and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all, there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind God had made.
When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off thinking about God.
II.
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"—
The picture in the Sunday At Home showed the old King in bed and Prince Hal trying on his crown. But the words were not the Sunday At Home; they were taken out of Shakespeare. Mark showed her the place.
Mark was in the schoolroom chanting his home-lessons:
"'Yet once more, oh ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere'"—
That sounded nice. "Say it again, Mark, say it again." Mark said it again. He also said:
"'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!'"