I tried, for some days, to fancy that it was not because Claude had ceased to care for what he had loved before, but rather that his feelings had grown so much deeper and truer, that he felt things divine too sacred to be talked about. But before the vacation was over, I was obliged to admit to myself, however unwilling I was to believe it, that Claude's views and opinions were quite changed about religious matters; that he had begun to doubt what he had before received with childlike faith; that he had begun to despise and hold in contempt that which from his mother's knee he had learnt to love and reverence.
"Oh, you have never been to Oxford, May," he said, rather contemptuously one day, when I was trying to prove something to him from the Bible. "You should read some books, which were lent to me by a man on my staircase. We are behind the times in this little, out-of-the-way place; the world is growing very clever and learned, and there are many things which we have always taken for granted about which there is really great doubt and uncertainty."
"What things, Claude?" I said. "You do not surely mean—"
"I mean parts of the Bible, May, and doctrines which are supposed to be proved from the Bible. But what is the use of talking about it to you? I don't want to unsettle your mind. If you like to believe it, and if it makes you happy, go on believing it, and be glad that you haven't read the books I have read."
"But you, Claude?" I said, sorrowfully.
"Oh, never mind about me, May, I am all right; I am a little wiser than you, that is all!"
"Are you happier, Claude?" I ventured to ask.
"Oh, I don't know, May; I don't think happiness, which is based on a delusion, is much worth having."
"Oh, Claude," I said, "it makes me wretched to hear you talk like that."
"Then talk about something else, May," he said gaily; "you began the subject, not I."