Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/220

Rh which has produced communists, pétroleuses, and liberal thinkers, had communicated its vague restlessness even to her; although she belonged to that higher region where nobody ever thinks at all, and everybody is more or less devout in seeming at any rate, because disbelief is vulgar, and religion is an 'affaire des mœurs,' like decency, still the subtle philosophies and sad negations which have always' been afloat in the air since Voltaire set them flying, had affected her slightly.

She was a true believer, just as she was a well-dressed woman, and had her creeds just as she had her bath in the morning, as a matter of course. Still, when she did come to think of it, she was not so very sure. There was another world, and saints and angels and eternity, yes, of course,—but how on earth would all those baccarat people ever fit into it? Who could, by any stretch of imagination, conceive Madame Mila and Maurice des Gommeux in a spiritual existence around the throne of Deity?

And as for punishment and torment and all that other side of futurity, who could even think