“Viva the League of Nations!” she cried, and drank brightly of her marsala.
Dr. Franchi, with an indulgent smile for youthful exuberance, drank too.
“The hope for the world,” he said. “You don't drink this toast, Mr. [Beechtree]?”
“My paper,” said Henry, “believes that such hope for the world as there may be lies elsewhere.”
“Ah, your paper. And you yourself?”
“I? I see no hope for the world. No hope, that is to say, that it will ever be an appreciably better world than it is at present. Before that occurs, I imagine that it will have broken its string, as it were, and dashed off into space, and so an end.”
“And my hopes for it are two—an extension of country-love into world-love, and a purified version of the Christian faith.”
“Purified....” Henry recollected that Dr. Franchi was a modernist and a heretic. “A queer word,” he mused. “I am not sure that I know what it means.”
“Ah. You are orthodox Catholic, no doubt. You admit no possible impurities in the faith.”