To Constance the pleasure was more real and far greater; for not only had her unfortunate opinions concerning matters of faith separated her from her few educated neighbours, but in that rustic and sleepy-minded spot there were none among them, excepting the curate, who took any interest in literary and philosophical questions. Her friends were not the people she knew, but the authors whose works she purchased with shillings saved out of the small quarterly allowance her mother made her for dress. These were the people she really knew and loved, and their thoughts were of infinitely deeper import to her than the sayings and doings of the men and women of her little world. In such circumstances, how pleasant it was to meet with this young stranger, engaging in his manner and attractive in appearance, and to converse freely with him on the subjects that constantly occupied her thoughts. There was a glow of happy excitement on her face, her eyes shone, she laughed in a free glad way, as Fan had never heard her laugh before; she was surprised at the extent of her own knowledge--at that miracle of memory, when many fine thoughts, long forgotten, and multitudes of strange facts, and glowing passages in verse and prose, came back uncalled to her mind; and above all she was surprised at a ready eloquence which she had never suspected herself capable of.
Merton Chance had often conversed with clever and beautiful women, but this country girl surprised him with the extent of her reading, her vivacity and wit, and quick sympathy; and the more they talked the more he admired her.
Then insensibly their conversation took a graver tone, and they passed to other themes, which, to Constance at least, had a deeper and more enduring interest. In all philosophical questions she could follow and even go beyond him, although she didn't know it, and very soon they made the discovery that towards the faith still professed by a large majority of their fellow-beings their attitude was the same. Or so it appeared to Constance. Christianity was one of the forms in which the universal religious sentiment had found expression for a period among a large portion of the human race. They were not agnostics, so they both declared, and yet were contented to be called so by others, not yet having invented a word better than this one of the materialistic Professor Huxley to describe themselves by. They had moved onwards and had left the creed of the Christian behind them, yet were confident that the vast unbounded prospect before them would not always rest obscured with clouds. But what the new thing was to be they knew not. Time would reveal it. They were not left without something to cheer them--gleams of a spiritual light which, although dim and transient, yet foretold the perfect day. Like so many others among the choice spirits of the earth, they turned their eyes this way and that, considering now the hard and pitiless facts of biology and physics, now the new systems of philosophy, that come like shadows and so depart, and now the vague thoughts, or thoughts vaguely expressed, of those the careless world calls mystics and wild-minded visionaries; and after it all they were fain to confess that the waters have not yet abated; and that although for them there could be no return to the ark, they were still without any rest for the soles of their feet.