“You think it pagan,” she told him.
“Perhaps I do,” he answered simply, as though impressed by her felicitous discovery of the adjective.
Alison laughed.
“It's pagan because I'm pagan, I suppose.”
“It's very beautiful—you have managed to get an extraordinary atmosphere,” he continued, bent on doing himself an exact justice. “But I should say, if you pressed me, that it represents to me the deification of beauty to the exclusion of all else. You have made beauty the Alpha and Omega.”
“There is nothing else for me,” she said.
The coffee-tray arrived and was deposited on a wicker table beside her. She raised herself on an elbow, filled his cup and handed it to him.
“And yet,” he persisted, “from the manner in which you spoke at the table—”
“Oh, don't imagine I haven't thought? But thinking isn't—believing.”
“No,” he admitted, with a touch of sadness, “you are right. There were certain comments you made on the Christian religion—”