'Perhaps! English political life runs so smooth, that to throw in a stone
and make a splash was amusing.'
'But was it fair?' she said, flushing.
'What do you mean?'
'Other people were in earnest; and you--'
'Were not? Charge home. I am prepared,' he said, smiling.
'You talk now--as though you were a Catholic--and you are not, you don't
believe,' she said suddenly, in a deep, low voice.
He looked at her for a moment in a smiling silence. His lips were ready
to launch a reckless sentence or two; but they refrained. Her attitude
meanwhile betrayed an unconscious dread--like a child that fears a blow.
'You charming saint!'--he thought; surprised at his own feeling of
pleasure. Pleasure in what?--in the fact that however she might judge his
opinions, she was clearly interested in the holder of them?
'What does one's own point of view matter?' he said gently. 'I believe what
I can,--and as long as I can--sometimes for a whole twenty-four hours! Then
a big doubt comes along, and sends me floundering. But that has nothing
to do with it. The case is quite simple. The world can't get on without
morals; and Catholicism, Anglicanism too--the religions of authority in
short--are the great guardians of morals. They are the binding forces--the
forces making for solidarity and continuity.
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