In some I found the same story, only with a
slightly altered face, and I learned, moreover, that each faith denied
the other, and claimed truth for itself alone.
"After that, too, I went to the college and there I fell in with a lady,
one of the mistresses, who was the cleverest woman that I ever knew,
and in her way a good woman, but one who believed that religion was the
curse of the world, and who spent all her spare time in attacking it in
some form or other. Poor thing, she is dead now. And so, you see, what
between these causes and the continual spectacle of human misery which
to my mind negatives the idea of a merciful and watching Power, at last
it came to pass that the only altar left in my temple is an altar to the
'Unknown God.'"
Geoffrey, like most men who have had to think on these matters, did not
care to talk about them much, especially to women. For one thing, he was
conscious of a tendency to speech less reverent than his thought. But he
had not entered Beatrice's church of Darkness, indeed he had turned
his back on it for ever, though, like most people, he had at different
periods of his past life tarried an hour in its porch.
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