Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/170

168 her hands over the breast of her white dress. "It seems to me that my religious feelings are only a result of my disappointment with life. I want to leave the world, not because I believe, really believe, that the religious life is the right one, but because I can't bear the life I lead. I would rather have absolute negation than the desire for something that doesn't exist. It's the life that attracts me. I couldn't become a Catholic and stay in the world. I wish to be shut out from it, to live in some narrow place, in a strict rule, to feel as mortal sin what I now want without really believing in it—and, then, I believe, I really should believe—I should see good and evil where now I see neither. I should feel that I have sinned, as I did when I talked to Father Damon just now—but now I don't feel it"

She turned suddenly and took Basil's arm.

"With you," she said, "I always feel the other thing, the other appeal. Just the thought that I was to see you to-day—and it kept coming up all the time Father Damon was talking—made me feel my inability to accept what he represents. To me just now, Basil, you are the world—not the world I want to get away from, my world—but the other, that I want without believing in it. I mean your point of view, your acceptance of life, the ease with which you take it—it seems to jar nothing in you, to leave noth-