“We have missed the way, Hugh,” she whispered, at last.
“But we can find it again, if we seek it together,” I urged.
“Ah, if I only could!” she said. “I could have once. But now I'm afraid—afraid of getting lost.” Slowly she straightened up, her hands falling into her lap. I seized them again, I was on my knees in front of her, before the fire, and she, intent, looking down at me, into me, through me it seemed—at something beyond which yet was me.
“Hugh,” she asked, “what do you believe? Anything?”
“What do I believe?”
“Yes. I don't mean any cant, cut-and-dried morality. The world is getting beyond that. But have you, in your secret soul, any religion at all? Do you ever think about it? I'm not speaking about anything orthodox, but some religion—even a tiny speck of it, a germ—harmonizing with life, with that power we feel in us we seek to express and continually violate.”
“Nancy!” I exclaimed.
“Answer me—answer me truthfully,” she said....
I was silent, my thoughts whirling like dust atoms in a storm.
“You have always taken things—taken what you wanted. But they haven't satisfied you, convinced you that that is all of life.”