"Indeed? Then I won't say any more, except that people have no
right to falsify the Bible! I HATE such hum-bug as could attempt to
plaster over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural,
human love as lies in that great and passionate song!" Her speech
had grown spirited, and almost petulant at his rebuke, and her eyes
moist. "I WISH I had a friend here to support me; but nobody is ever
on my side!"
"But my dear Sue, my very dear Sue, I am not against you!" he said,
taking her hand, and surprised at her introducing personal feeling
into mere argument.
"Yes you are, yes you are!" she cried, turning away her face that he
might not see her brimming eyes. "You are on the side of the people
in the training-school--at least you seem almost to be! What I
insist on is, that to explain such verses as this: 'Whither is thy
beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?' by the note: '_The Church
professeth her faith_,' is supremely ridiculous!"
"Well then, let it be! You make such a personal matter of
everything! I am--only too inclined just now to apply the words
profanely. You know YOU are fairest among women to me, come to
that!"
"But you are not to say it now!" Sue replied, her voice changing
to its softest note of severity. Then their eyes met, and they
shook hands like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of
quarrelling on such a hypothetical subject, and she the silliness of
crying about what was written in an old book like the Bible.
"I won't disturb your convictions--I really won't!" she went on
soothingly, for now he was rather more ruffled than she. "But I did
want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw you,
and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I--shall I confess it?--thought
that man might be you. But you take so much tradition on trust that
I don't know what to say."
"Well, dear; I suppose one must take some things on trust. Life
isn't long enough to work out everything in Euclid problems before
you believe it. I take Christianity."
"Well, perhaps you might take something worse."
"Indeed I might. Perhaps I have done so!" He thought of Arabella.
"I won't ask what, because we are going to be VERY nice with each
other, aren't we, and never, never, vex each other any more?" She
looked up trustfully, and her voice seemed trying to nestle in his
breast.