Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/85

 “You do not believe any of it, and you call yourself a Catholic!” exclaimed Mrs. Garrison.

Both women were amazed by a position especially common to the Catholics of Italy, but by no means limited to them. Catholicism retains sufficient control over modern Roman life to make it important for Italians who would serve their city in any capacity to avow an outward allegiance to the Vatican.

“Is there, then, a difference between not believing a religion and not belonging to it?” asked Anne, turning her clear eyes upon Curatulo.

He was unaccustomed to logic or definite thought in woman, and it surprised him especially in one so young, so fragilely slender, so manifestly created to be loved by man.

“What does it matter?” he said. “The subject does not interest me. Am I never to speak to you without whispering, because of some one who walks on the other side?”

She did not answer him at once, and before she could do so her aunt noticed a strange chanting that echoed persistently through the vast aisles, and declared it to be the performance of a mass she had come to hear.

Anne, whose school-days were not long passed, thought that the voices of the very old men who