"Do you suppose," said Gertrude, "that they whose houses are built on such a sandy foundation will quietly see them undermined? _Such_ a hue and cry as they will raise (all for the honor of the cause, of course!) about your 'speaking lightly of religion and its professors!'"
"Very true," said John, "it is speaking lightly of its _professors_ but not of its _possessors_. They might as well tell you to keep dumb about a gang of counterfeiters, lest it should do injury to the money-market; bah! Gertrude, I have no patience with such tampering; but to dismiss an unpleasant topic, you have plenty of employment, I see;" and John glanced round the room at Gertrude's pictures. "I am proud of you, Gertrude; I honor you for your self-reliance; but what is your fancy, with your artistic reputation, for living such a nun's life?"
"Well," said Gertrude, "in the first place, my time is too valuable to me to be thrown away on bores and idlers, and the Paul Pry family, in all its various ramifications. Autograph hunters I have found not without their use, as I never answer their communications, and they find me in letter stamps. But _entre nous_, John, I have no very exalted opinion of the sex to which you belong.
"Men are so gross and unspiritual, John, so wedded to making money and promiscuous love, so selfish and unchivalric; of course there are occasionally glorious exceptions, but who would be foolish enough to wade through leagues of brambles, and briars, to find perchance one flower? Female friends, of course, are out of the question, always excepting Rose, whose title is no misnomer. And as to general society, it is so seldom one finds a congenial circle that, having resources of my own, I feel disinclined to encounter the risk."
"This isolation is unnatural; Gertrude, you can not be happy."
"Who is?" asked Gertrude. "Are you? Is Rose? Where is the feast at which there is no skeleton? I make no complaint. I enjoyed more happiness in the five years of my first wedded life than falls to the lot of most mortals in a life-time. I know that such an experience can not be repeated, so I live on the past. You say I am not happy; I am negatively happy. If I gather no honey, I at least escape the sting."