, it's the right idea; it's got to be
followed out if we don't want love-making to be a sort of idle,
troublesome game of treats and flatteries that is sure as anything to
lead right away to disappointments and foolishness and unfaithfulness
and--just Hell. What you are driving at, according to my interpretation,
is that marriage has got to be a religious marriage or else you are
splitting up life, that religion and love are most of life and all the
power there is in it, and that they can't afford to be harnessed in two
different directions.... I never had these ideas until I came here and
met you, but they come up now in my mind as though they had always been
there.... And that's why you don't want to marry in a hurry. And that's
why I'm glad almost that you don't want to marry in a hurry."

He considered. "That's why I'll have to go on to Germany and just let
both of us turn things over in our minds."

"Yes," said Cecily, weighing his speech. "_I_ think that is it. I think
that I do want a religious marriage, and that what is wrong with Teddy
and Letty is that they aren't religious. They pretend they are religious
somewhere out of sight and round the corner.... Only--"

He considered her gravely.

"What _is_ Religion?" she asked.

Here again there was a considerable pause.

"Very nearly two-thirds of the papers read before our Massachusetts
society since my connection with it, have dealt with that very
question," Mr. Direck began. "And one of our most influential members
was able to secure the services of a very able and highly trained young
woman from Michigan University, to make a digest of all these
representative utterances. We are having it printed in a thoroughly
artistic mariner, as the club book for our autumn season. The drift of
her results is that religion isn't the same thing as religions. That
most religions are old and that religion is always new.... Well, putting
it simply, religion is the perpetual rediscovery of that Great Thing Out
There.... What the Great Thing is goes by all sorts of names, but if you
know it's there and if you remember it's there, you've got religion....
That's about how she figured it out.... I shall send you the book as
soon as a copy comes over to me.... I can't profess to put it as clearly
as she puts it. She's got a real analytical mind. But it's one of the
most suggestive lil' books I've ever seen. It just takes hold of you and
_makes_ you think."

He paused and rega