nt on; "they
turned the England of Queen Elizabeth--the most glorious England the
world has ever known--into one enormous Nonconformist Conscience; and
England has never been perfectly normal since. Besides, they discovered
that nature, and art, and human affection, which are really revelations
of God, were actually sins against Him. As I said before, I can never
forgive the Puritans for eradicating the beauty from holiness, and for
giving man the spirit of heaviness in place of the garment of praise."

"I wonder if Paganism helped you much when you were poor and ill and
unhappy, and things in general had gone wrong with you. I daresay it was
very nice for the cheerful, prosperous people; but how about those who
had never got what they wanted out of life, and were never likely to get
it?" Christopher, like other people, looked at most matters from his own
individual standpoint; and his own individual standpoint was not at all
a comfortable spot just then.

"The Greeks suffered and died as did the Jews and the Christians,"
replied Elisabeth, "yet they were a joyous and light-hearted race. It is
not sorrow that saddens the world, but rather modern Christianity's
idealization of sorrow. I do not believe we should be half as miserable
as we are if we did not believe that there is virtue in misery, and that
by disowning our mercies and discarding our blessings we are currying
favour in the eyes of the Being, Who, nevertheless, has showered those
mercies and those blessings upon us."

Thus had Alan Tremaine's influence gradually unmoored Elisabeth from the
old faiths in which she had been brought up; and he had done it so
gradually that the girl was quite unconscious of how far she had drifted
from her former anchorage. He was too well-bred ever to be blatant in
his unbelief--he would as soon have thought of attacking a man's family
to his face as of attacking his creed; but subtly and with infinite tact
he endeavoured to prove that to adapt ancient revelations to modern
requirements was merely putting new wine into old bottles and mending
old garments with new cloth; and Elisabeth was as yet too young and
inexperienced to see any fallacy in his carefully prepared arguments.

She had nobody to help her to resist him, poor child! and she was
dazzled with the consciousness of intellectual power which his attitude
of mind appeared to take for granted. Miss Farringdon was cast in too
stern a mould to have any sympathy or patie