“Don’t you find it matters? In being friends, I mean?”
“What? Oh, that. No, not a bit. How should it matter, that I happen to believe certain things they don’t? How could it?”
“It would to me.” Molly spoke with conviction. “I might try, but I know I couldn’t really be friends—not close friends—with an unbeliever.”
“Oh yes, you could. You’d get over all that, once you knew them. It doesn’t stick out of them, what they don’t believe; it very seldom turns up. Besides theirs is such an ordinary, and such a comprehensible and natural point of view. Have you always believed what you do now about such things?”
“Why, of course. Haven’t you?”
“Oh dear no. For quite a long time I didn’t. After all, it’s pretty difficult.... And particularly at my home I think it was a little difficult—for me, anyhow. I suppose I wanted more of the Catholic Church standpoint. I didn’t come across that much till Cambridge; then suddenly I caught on to the point of view, and saw how fine it was.”
“It’s more than fine,” said Molly. “It’s true.”
“Rather, of course it is. So are all fine things. If once all these people who don’t believe saw the fineness of it, they’d see it must be true. Meanwhile, I don’t see that the fact that one believes one’s friends to be missing something they might have is any sort of reason for not being friends. Is it now? Billy might as well say he couldn’t be friends with you because you said you didn’t care about Masefield. You miss something he’s got; that’s all the difference it makes, in either case.”
“Masefield isn’t so important as——” Molly left a shy hiatus.