“But certain religions,” I said, “involve the slaughter of human beings.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve included them. That’s why those knives are hanging on the wall.”
“But surely you don’t practise them?” I said.
“No, they’re cancelled out,” she said, “by the religions that forbid the taking of life.”
“But it seems to me,” I said, “that, at that rate, all your religions cancel each other out.”
“Yes,” she replied. “That’s what it often seems to me.”
“But then you haven’t a religion at all?”
“Well, I sometimes doubt it,” she said. “I often wonder if I did the right thing in embracing them?”
It was not to discuss her religion, however, that I had journeyed to Enfield, as I was now somewhat tartly obliged to remind her.
“And you seem to be forgetting,” I added, “that I’ve just been dismissed from the employment you were compelled to find me.”