There came a rush of calm restrained vehemence into her cold tones that brought them to a sort of white heat. “Why am I not mouldable—or like other women?”
“My good child, you could hardly expect that from the daughter of your father and mother—you are unreasonable!”
“Yes, you are right, I had forgotten them,” she said.
“It is abominable we should be such puppets, not only present chances to play fast and loose with us, but to have to dance to the tune of old, ignorant, half-daft ones, that should go and rot in the grave of old failures! Why should they stay and torment us? We have enough of their kind to deal with on our own account. Have you ever read the Bible?”
“Have I ever read the Bible! Do I not know every inch of Syria, and every second inch of Egypt? Yes, I have read the Book, and on its native soil.”
“Perhaps that may suit it, I don’t think ours does. There was one thing, however, I read in it, that took hold of me; you may know it—‘God’s ways are past finding out,’—this seems to me to contain a whole philosophy, capable of universal application, and reaching to the present time.”
“You are going too fast, my good Gwen; isn’t that rather the philosophy of ignorance? You are arguing from a point you rarely affect—from the point of view of Jewish theology with its strong, and primitive, and mystery-loving methods. God’s ways, after all, if we choose to dig into them are no denser, and are just on the same line as Nature’s. She permits no cause without an effect, or she will very well know the reason why.”
“I wasn’t arguing from any point of view, Jewish or otherwise, I was just applying a theological axiom personally, thinking of parents and other chances.”
“Ah, that’s an idle subject, isn’t it? By the way, you have a sneaking regard yourself for that bridal creature—you admire the woman, don’t you?”
“Admire her! Yes, as a woman, of course I do. Why, she is—superb! With that mature strong tenderness in every line of her, and that divine protecting patient air of hers—that woman might be a mother of nations.”
Strange started and his mouth twitched suddenly, the blood stopped in his veins and red and blue stars swam before his eyes. Gwen went on unheeding, in her passionless tones—