THE young man thus addressed gave over fingering the piano-keys, as he had been softly doing from time to time, whirled about on the music-stool, and indulged in a prolonged and curious stare at his questioner.
"I beg your pardon," he said at last, with a little laugh, as he recognized the rudeness of the proceeding; "I am struck dumb, I think. In all my previous extended experience no more astonishing query has ever been put to me. I don't know how to take it."
"Won't you simply answer it?"
"Why, it is too astonishing to me that the thing requires an answer! I don't believe I even know what it is to be the sort of character to which you refer."
"Then, am I to understand that you don't know but you may be one?"
The young man laughed again, a slightly embarrassed laugh, and gave his visitor a swift, penetrating glance, as if he would like to know whether she was playing a part; then finding that she waited, he said:
"Oh, not at all! In fact, I may say I am very certain that I don't belong to the class in question, even in name."
"May I ask you why?"
"Why!" He repeated the word. There was something very bewildering and embarrassing about these short, direct, simply-put questions. He had never heard them before. "Really, that is harder to answer than the first. What is it to be a Christian, Miss Benedict?"