"I say, I like your cousin."
Manning folded the paper carelessly and tossed it aside, feeling for his tobacco pouch. "I'm sure I'm very pleased," he said.
"Don't rag. She worries me."
"I thought you said you liked her."
"So I do, but it is exactly that that worries me. She's an atheist."
"True. It runs in the family in this generation. A reaction perhaps. Her father was a churchwarden, and her mother likes the vicar to call once a month."
Paul shifted uneasily. "It isn't a subject for joking to me," he said. "You know that, very well you know it. I may be in difficulties, but I believe in God with all my heart."
Manning leaned back easily in his chair and lit his pipe. "You think you do," he said, between the puffs.
Paul rounded on him eagerly. "But I do," he insisted. "To be honest, it is an utter mystery to me how you do not. I can't conceive of it at all. I know we've never discussed the point before—it hasn't seemed to me worth discussion, the existence of God, I mean—but I want to now."
"Ahl And why now?"