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.