Ceasing her pretence at sewing, she walked
out of the house into the yard. Standing there under the stars she said
aloud, as if some one, THE One, could hear her: "He doesn't mean to do
wrong. . . . I KNOW he doesn't!" But when she re-entered the room he was
still at it. His beautiful writing, reduced to its tiniest, wound round
the narrow margins.
Deeply red, Polly took her courage in both hands, and struck a blow for
the soul whose salvation was more to her than her own. "Richard, do you
think that . . . is . . . is right?" she asked in a low voice.
Mahony raised his head. "Eh?--what, Pollykin?"
"I mean, do you think you ought . . . that it is right to do what you
are doing?"
The smile, half-tender, half-quizzical that she loved, broke over her
husband's face. He held out his hand. "Is my little wife troubled?"
"Richard, I only mean. . ."
"Polly, my dear, don't worry your little head over what you don't
understand. And have confidence in me. You know I wouldn't do anything I
believed to be wrong?"
"Yes, indeed. And you are really far more religious than I am."
"One can be religious and yet not shut one's eyes to the truth. It's
Saint Paul, you know, who says: we can do nothing against the Truth but
for the Truth. And you may depend on it, Polly, the All-Wise would never
have given us the brains He has, if He had not intended us to use them.
Now I have long felt sure that the Bible is not wholly what it claims to
be--direct inspiration.
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