Presently Miss Combe, somewhat out of breath, seated herself on the foot-rest of a stile.
‘Won’t you take a rest, dear?’ she said; ‘there’s room for two.’
The young lady shook her head. As she fixed her eyes upon her companion, one peculiarity of hers became manifest. She was rather short-sighted, and, whenever examining anything or anybody, slightly closed her eyelashes.
‘If I were as rich as you,’ continued Miss Combe after a pause, ‘I know what I should do with my money.’
‘Indeed! pray tell me.’
‘I should build a church to the New Faith!’
‘Are you serious?’ said Alma merrily. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know what the new faith is.’
‘The faith of Humanity; not Comte’s, which is Frenchified rubbish, but the beautiful faith in human perfection and the divine future of the race. Just think what a Church it would make! In the centre an altar “to the Unknown God”; painted windows all round, with the figures of all the great teachers, from Socrates to Herbert Spencer, and signs of the zodiac and figures of the planets, if you like, on the celestial roof.’
‘I don’t quite see, Agatha, in what respect the new Church would be an improvement on the old one,’ returned Alma; and as she spoke her eyes travelled over the still landscape, and saw far away, between her and the sea, the glittering spire of the church of Fensea.
‘It would be different in every particular,’ said Miss Combe good-humouredly. ‘In the first place, the architecture would be, of course, pure Greek, and there would be none of the paraphernalia of superstition.’