cottage; roses peep in at the
porch, and birds sing on the bushes. After a term in London, it's
a delicious change for one."

"But are you alone?" Alan interposed again, still half hesitating.

Herminia smiled once more; his surprise amused her. "Yes, quite
alone," she answered. "But if you seem so astonished at that, I
shall believe you and Mrs. Dewsbury have been trying to take me in,
and that you're not really with us. Why shouldn't a woman come
down alone to pretty lodgings in the country?"

"Why not, indeed?" Alan echoed in turn. "It's not at all that I
disapprove, Miss Barton; on the contrary, I admire it; it's only
that one's surprised to find a woman, or for the matter of that
anybody, acting up to his or her convictions. That's what I've
always felt; 'tis the Nemesis of reason; if people begin by
thinking rationally, the danger is that they may end by acting
rationally also."

Herminia laughed. "I'm afraid," she answered, "I've already
reached that pass. You'll never find me hesitate to do anything on
earth, once I'm convinced it's right, merely because other people
think differently on the subject."

Alan looked at her and mused. She was tall and stately, but her
figure was well developed, and her form softly moulded. He admired
her immensely. How incongruous an outcome from a clerical family!
"It's curious," he said, gazing hard at her, "that you should be a
dean's daughter."

"On the contrary," Herminia answered, with perfect frankness, "I
regard myself as a living proof of the doctrine of heredity."

"How so?" Alan inquired.

"Well, my father was a Senior Wrangler," Herminia replied, blushing
faintly; "and I suppose that implies a certain moderate development
of the logical faculties. In HIS generation, people didn't apply
the logical faculties to the grounds of belief; they took those for
granted; but within his own limits, my father is still an acute
reasoner. And then he had always the ethical and social interests.
Those two things--a love of logic, and a love of right--are the
forces that tend to make us what we call religious. Worldly people
don't care for fundamental questions of the universe at all; they
accept passively whatever is told them; they think they think, and
believe they believe it. But people with an interest in
fundamental truth inquire for themselves into the constitution of
the cosmos; if they are convinced one way, they become what we call
theologians; if t