"I doubt if I should have the courage to wear one. At all
events, I don't regard superstitions in the light of a luxury.
I should be glad to be rid of those I have. They're a horrible
inconvenience. But I can't get it out of my head that the air
is filled with a swarm of malignant little devils, who are
always watching their chance to do us an ill turn. We don't in
the least know the conditions under which they can bring it
off; but it's legendary that if we wear opals, or sit thirteen
at table, or start an enterprise on Friday, or what not, we
somehow give them their opportunity. And one naturally wishes
to be on the safe side."
She looked at him with. doubt, considering.
"You don't seriously believe all that?" she said.
"No, I don't seriously believe it. But one breathes it in with
the air of one's nursery, and it sticks. I don't believe it,
but I fear it just enough to be made uneasy. The evil eye, for
instance. How can one spend any time in Italy, where everybody
goes loaded with charms against it, and help having a sort of
sneaking half-belief in the evil eye?"
She shook her head, laughing.
"I 've spent a good deal of time in Italy, but I have n't so
much as a sneaking quarter-belief in it."
"I envy you your strength of mind," said he. "But surely,
though superstition is a luxury forbidden to Catholics, there
are plenty of good Catholics who indulge in it, all the same?"
"There are never plenty of good Catholics," said sire. "You
employ a much-abused expression. To profess the Catholic
faith, to go to Mass on Sunday and abstain from meat on Friday,
that is by no means sufficient to constitute a good Catholic.
To be a good Catholic one would have to be a saint, nothing
less--and not a mere formal saint, either, but a very real
saint, a saint in thought and feeling, as well as in speech and
action. Just in so far as one is superstitious, one is a bad
Catholic. Oh, if the world were populated by good Catholics,
it would be the Millennium come to pass."
"It would be that, if it were populated by good Christians
--wouldn't it?" asked Peter.
"The terms are interchangeable," she answered sweetly, with a
half-comical look of defiance.
"Mercy!" cried he. "Can't a Protestant be a good Christian
too?"