“I think you never can be serious, Anne. Nobody holds harder to their beliefs than you do. I can’t imagine what the old pagan meant. Saved from what? ‘Cast away opinion, and you are saved.’”
“It is the salvation of negation, Archie; pretty popular in some places. It is not my kind.”
“I shall get no help here,” said her brother. “You are no easier to eject from a mental mood than I am. I think I shall give it up and go a-fishing.”
“It is my changeless opinion that you are now on the track of reason. The first fish will answer you. He will be quite on the side of Marcus Aurelius, and wish he had not had a too definite opinion as to the desirability of closer relations with a dusty miller or Durham ranger. Get to thee fine opinions, but don’t act on them. Thus, thou shalt have the cool joy of theory, and escape the hot results of its practical application.”
“On my honor, Anne, you are quite intolerable at times.”
“I am to myself, old fellow. I wish aches were opinions. The Christian Science idiots say they are. I would like to exchange aches for opinions.”
“Are you not so well to-day?” he said, putting Aurelius in his coat-pocket. “You look much better.”
“I am far better than usual,” she returned, hastily repentant, as usual, of her admission of weakness or pain. “I am thinking of going over to see Dorothy this afternoon. It is a great enterprise for me, but I really cannot bide, as she says.”
“Why not?”
“My dear Archie, she took away ‘Macbeth’ to read, yesterday, and I must—I cannot wait. I want to know what she thinks of it.”