o paint pictures.'" She
could see that the parable had convinced him, or nearly. He had said he
was afraid she was hopeless. But a moment after, drawing her toward him
with quiet, masterful arm, and speaking with that hard voice that could
become so soft, it had seemed as if heaven suddenly melted away, and his
kisses were worth every sacrifice.

That was the worst of it. She was neither one thing nor the other. She
desired two lives diametrically opposed to each other, consequently she
would never be happy. But she was happy. She had everything; she could
think of nothing that she wanted that she had not got: it was really too
ridiculous for her to pretend to herself that she was not happy. So long
as she had believed in religion she had not been happy, but now she
believed no longer--she was happy. It was strange, however, that a
church always brought the old feeling back again, and her thoughts
paused, and in a silent awe of soul she asked herself if, at the bottom
of her soul, she still disbelieved in God. But it was so silly to
believe the story of the Virgin--think of it.... As Owen said, in no
mythology was there anything more ridiculous. Nevertheless, she did not
convince herself that the dim, vague, unquiet sensation which rankled in
her was not a still unextirpated germ of the original faith. She tried
to think it was not a religious feeling but the result of the terrible
interview still hanging over her, the dread that her father might not
forgive her. She tried to look into her mind to discover the impulse
which had compelled her to turn from her intention and come to this
church. She remembered the uncontrollable desire to say a prayer: that
she could have resisted, but the moment after she had remembered that
perhaps it was too late to find her father at home. But had she really
hoped to find him at St. Joseph's, or had she used the pretext to
deceive herself? She could not tell. But if religion was not true, if
she did not believe, how was it that she had always thought it wrong to
live with a man to whom she was not married? There was no use
pretending, she never had quite got a haunting scruple on that point out
of her mind.

There could be but two reasons, he had insisted, for the maintenance of
the matrimonial idea--the preservation of the race, and the belief that
cohabitation without matrimony is an offence against God. But the race
is antecedent to matrimony, and if there be no resurrection, there