It came over him
that he was an apostate; one who had abandoned all that he had vowed to
uphold; his vanity smarted at the thought that she must think him weak
and unstable as water.
"I am only what I was," he went on. "The difference is that I have
discovered what you probably saw all the time, that I don't believe the
things I have been taught. I am as free from the old creeds as you are.
I don't even pretend to know that there is a God."
"My dear boy," she responded, shrugging her shoulders, "you run into
extremes like a schoolgirl. I beg you won't talk as if I could be so
vulgar as not to believe in a deity. Don't rank me with the crowd of
common folk that try to increase their own importance by insisting that
there's nothing above them. Really, an atheist seems to me as bad as a
man who eats with his knife."
He changed countenance, but her words left him speechless. He could not
hear her speak in this way without being shocked. He might be without
creed, but his temper was still devout.
"If you've thrown overboard all your old dogmas," she went on with
unruffled face, "you'd better go to work to get a new set.
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