"You mean by the stake and boiling lead?"
"When, for example, she notified Galileo that she would roast him alive, as she had already roasted Bruno, if he persisted in his heresy that the earth was round instead of flat?"
"If you are happy in that belief, I will not destroy it."
"It is a historic fact, but I am no happier for believing it. However, too much education is a nuisance, and very likely Mamma Church was wise in toasting an astronomer now and then."
"Your conclusions are rather entertaining. I am a Catholic myself, and my own reading has brought opinions that are quite different."
She spoke calmly, but he detected a less friendly tone. In a joking, incredulous manner he replied, "Well, then, I am a Catholic, too."
"I am serious. My faith to me is a sacred thing. It has brought me a more tranquil spirit, a deeper knowledge, and a fuller conception of what I owe to others--and to myself."
"Then I beg your pardon," he said, "for speaking as I did."
She tried to smile. "It is more my fault than yours. Religious discussions never do any good."
Then she arose from her chair, and he knew from the exceeding dignity of her manner that his offence was serious. But this dignity met with cruel reverses. As she stood up, their side of the steamer was just starting on a downward lurch,--one of those long, deep, quivering plunges, apparently for the bottom of the sea, slow at first, but gaining in rapidity. And Elinor Marshall, instead of turning away with frigid ceremony, as she intended, first stood irresolute, as if taken unawares,--yet suspecting danger,--then tiptoed forward and rushed impetuously into the gentleman's arms. These arms were forced to encircle the sudden arrival, otherwise both man and woman would have tumbled to the deck. Then, she pushed him hard against the rail. But even that was not the end. For there she held him, to her shame, pressing against him with the whole weight of her body. And this lasted, it seemed to her, an hour--a year--a lifetime of mortification and of helpless rage; the wind all the time screaming louder and louder with a brutish glee.
Her choking exclamations of chagrin were close to his ears, and he felt her hair against his face. But he was powerless to aid in her struggles to regain the lost equilibrium. However good his wishes, he could do nothing but stand as a cushion--poorly upholstered at that--between herself and the rail.