Herminia laughed. "I'm afraid," she answered, "I've already

reached that pass. You'll never find me hesitate to do anything on

earth, once I'm convinced it's right, merely because other people

think differently on the subject."

Alan looked at her and mused. She was tall and stately, but her

figure was well developed, and her form softly moulded. He admired

her immensely. How incongruous an outcome from a clerical family!

"It's curious," he said, gazing hard at her, "that you should be a

dean's daughter."

"On the contrary," Herminia answered, with perfect frankness, "I

regard myself as a living proof of the doctrine of heredity."

"How so?" Alan inquired.

"Well, my father was a Senior Wrangler," Herminia replied, blushing

faintly; "and I suppose that implies a certain moderate development

of the logical faculties. In HIS generation, people didn't apply

the logical faculties to the grounds of belief; they took those for

granted; but within his own limits, my father is still an acute

reasoner. And then he had always the ethical and social interests.

Those two things--a love of logic, and a love of right--are the

forces that tend to make us what we call religious. Worldly people

don't care for fundamental questions of the universe at all; they

accept passively whatever is told them; they think they think, and

believe they believe it. But people with an interest in

fundamental truth inquire for themselves into the constitution of

the cosmos; if they are convinced one way, they become what we call

theologians; if they are convinced the other way, they become what

we call free-thinkers. Interest in the problem is common to both;

it's the nature of the solution alone that differs in the two

cases."

"That's quite true," Alan assented. "And have you ever noticed

this curious corollary, that you and I can talk far more

sympathetically with an earnest Catholic, for example, or an

earnest Evangelical, than we can talk with a mere ordinary worldly

person."

"Oh dear, yes," Herminia answered with conviction. "Thought will

always sympathize with thought. It's the unthinking mass one can

get no further with."

Alan changed the subject abruptly. This girl so interested him.

She was the girl he had imagined, the girl he had dreamt of, the

girl he had thought possible, but never yet met with. "And you're

in lodgings on the Holmwood here?" he said, musing. "For how much

longer?"

"For, six weeks, I'm glad to say," Herminia answered, rising.




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