Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/108

Rh Her eyes met his with gratitude, even while she gave him a gesture of silence. She thought how little could the bold, straight stroke of this man's frank chivalry cut through the innumerable and intricate chains that entangled her own life. The knightly Excalibur could do nothing to sever the filmy but insoluble meshes of secret intrigues. "It is a Saint's day: I had forgotten it!" she said, to turn his words from herself, while the bell of the campanile still swung through the air. "I am a pagan, you see—I do not fancy that you care much for creeds yourself?"

"Creeds? I wish there were no such word. It has only been a rallying-cry for war—an excuse for the bigot to burn his neighbour!"

"No. Long ago, under the Andes, Nezahualcoytl held the same faith that Socrates had vainly taught in the Agora; and Zengis Khan knew the truth of theism like Plato; yet the world has never generally learnnt it! It is the religion of nature—of reason. But the faith is too simple and too sublime for the multitude. The mass of minds needs a religion of mythus, legend, symbolism, and fear. What is impalpable, escapes it; and it must give an outward and visible shape to its belief, as it gives in its art a human form to its deity. Come, since we agree