She's tremendously up-to-date. She takes in all the moral
fashion-papers, and wears the newest thing in ethics."
Her resentment lost its way in the intricacies of his metaphor. "Is
she so very religious?"
"You dear archaic woman! She's hopelessly irreligious; that's the
difficulty. You can make a religious woman believe almost anything:
there's the habit of credulity to work on. But when a girl's faith
in the Deluge has been shaken, it's very hard to inspire her with
confidence. She makes you feel that, before believing in you, it's
her duty as a conscientious agnostic to find out whether you're not
obsolete, or whether the text isn't corrupt, or somebody hasn't
proved conclusively that you never existed, anyhow."
Mrs. Quentin was again silent. The two moved in that atmosphere of
implications and assumptions where the lightest word may shake down
the dust of countless stored impressions; and speech was sometimes
more difficult between them than had their union been less close.
Presently she ventured, "It's impossible?"
"Impossible?"
She seemed to use her words cautiously, like weapons that might slip
and inflict a cut. "What she suggests."
Her son, raising himself, turned to look at her for the first time.
Their glance met in a shock of comprehension. He was with her
against the girl, then! Her satisfaction overflowed in a murmur of
tenderness.
"Of course not, dear. One can't change--change one's life...."
"One's self," he emended.
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