"God help them, indeed," said Peter.
"And the little girl, with her medal of the Immaculate
Conception. The father, after all, can hardly be the brute one
might suspect, since he has given them a religious education.
Oh, I am sure, I am sure, it was the Blessed Virgin herself who
sent us across their path, in answer to that poor little
creature's prayers."
"Yes," said Peter, ambiguously perhaps. But he liked the way
in which she united him to herself in the pronoun.
"Which, of course," she added, smiling gravely into his eyes,
"seems the height of absurdity to you?"
"Why should it seem the height of absurdity to me?" he asked.
"You are a Protestant, I suppose?"
"I suppose so. But what of that? At all events, I believe
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of
in the usual philosophies. And I see no reason why it should
not have been the Blessed Virgin who sent us across their
path."
"What would your Protestant pastors and masters do, if they
heard you? Isn't that what they call Popish superstition?"
"I daresay. But I'm not sure that there's any such thing as
superstition. Superstition, in its essence, is merely a
recognition of the truth that in a universe of mysteries and
contradictions, like ours, nothing conceivable or inconceivable
is impossible."
"Oh, no, no," she objected. "Superstition is the belief in
something that is ugly and bad and unmeaning. That is the
difference between superstition and religion. Religion is the
belief in something that is beautiful and good and significant
--something that throws light into the dark places of life--that
helps us to see and to live."
"Yes," said Peter, "I admit the distinction." After a little
suspension, "I thought," he questioned, "that all Catholics
were required to go to Mass on Sunday?"
"Of course--so they are," said she.
"But--but you--" he began.
"I hear Mass not on Sunday only--I hear it every morning of my
life."
"Oh? Indeed? I beg your pardon," he stumbled. "I--one--one
never sees you at the village church."
"No. We have a chapel and a chaplain at the castle."
She mounted her bicycle.
"Good-bye," she said, and lightly rode away.
"So-ho! Her bigotry is not such a negligible quantity, after
all," Peter concluded.
"But what," he demanded of Marietta, as she ministered to his
wants at dinner, "what does one barrier more or less matter,
when people are already divided by a gulf that never can be
traversed? You see that river?" He pointed through his open
window to the Aco. "It is a symbol. She stands on one side of
it, I stand on the other, and we exchange little jokes. But
the river is always there, flowing between us, separating us.
She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the
fairest of her sex, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic.
What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest?
. . . My dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim
of a misplaced attachment."