Page:The Yellow Book - 05.djvu/28

20 had made that discovery his somewhat sudden death prevented him from appointing some one of keener analytical acumen in my place.

It would not be fair to the novel, in case it should ever be published, to give any specimens of it here; it might discount the reader s interest in the development of the plot. But this is the sort of thing the diary consists of:

"June 15.—Went yesterday to call on my aunt Catherine and found her more troubled than ever about the foundations of her faith. It is a singular phenomenon this awakening of doubt in an elderly mind—this 'St. Martin's summer' of scepticism if I may so call it; an intensely curious and at the same time a painful study. For me it has so potent a fascination, that I never say or do anything, even in what at the time seems to me perfect good faith, to invite a continuance of my aunt's confidences, without afterwards suspecting my own motives. My first inclination was to divert her mind to other subjects. Why, I asked myself, should an old lady of seventy-two who has all her life accepted the conventional religion without question be encouraged to what the French call faire son âme at this extremely late hour of the day? Still you can't very well tell any old lady, even though she is your aunt, that you think she is too old to begin bothering herself with these high matters. You have to put it just the other way, and suggest that she has probably many years of life before her, and will have plenty of time for such speculations later on. But the first sentence I tried to frame in this sense reminded me so ludicrously of Mrs. Quickly's consolations of the dying Falstaff, that I had to stop for fear of laughing, and allow her to go on. For reply I put her off at the time with commonplaces, but she has since renewed the conversation so often that I feel I shall be obliged to disclose Rh