"You should have come a little sooner," said Phyllis quite pleasantly.
"Mr. Courtland was giving me such an amusing account of his latest voyage. Will you have tea or iced coffee?"
"Tea, if you please," said George Holland, also quite pleasantly. "Has Mr. Courtland been on another voyage of discovery? What has he left himself to discover in the world of waters?"
"I think that what he discovered on his latest voyage was the effect of a banjo on the human mind," laughed Phyllis. "He was aboard Lord Earlscourt's yacht, the /Water Nymph/. Some other men were there also.
One of them had an idea that he could play upon the banjo. He was wrong, Mr. Courtland thinks."
"A good many people are subject to curious notions of the same type.
They usually take an optimistic view of the susceptibilities of enjoyment of their neighbors--not that there is any connection between enjoyment and a banjo."
"Mr. Courtland said just now that when Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that music was, of all noises, the least disagreeable, the banjo had not been invented."
"That assumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo, and that's going just a little too far, don't you think?"
"I should like to hear Dr. Johnson's criticism of Paderewski."
"His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant: a fine piece of eighteenth century directness."
"I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You remember Fanny Burney's reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour with that man."
"I long for more than that. I should like to have seen David Garrick's reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson's love passages with his very mature wife. I should also like to have heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room."
"Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?"
"Of course. I question if there was anything very much better aboard the /Water Nymph/. By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the yachting party. She did not mention it to her husband, however. She thought that there should be a chaplain aboard. Now, considering that Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain paper of mine in the /Zeit Geist Review/."
"I'm sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home."
"And in writing the paper in the /Zeit Geist/? You have read it?"
"Oh, yes! I have read it."
"You don't like it?"
"How could I like it? You have known me now for sometime. How could you fancy that I should like it--that is, if you thought of me at all in connection with it? I don't myself see why you should think of me at all."
He rose and stood before her. She had risen to take his empty cup from him.
"Don't you know that I think of you always, Phyllis?" he said, in that low tone of his which flowed around the hearts of his hearers, and made their hearts as one with his heart. "Don't you know that I think of you always--that all my hopes are centered in you?"
"I am so sorry if that is the case, Mr. Holland," said she. "I don't want to give you pain, but I must tell you again what I told you long ago: you have passed completely out of my life. If you had not done so before, the publication of that article in the /Zeit Geist/ would force me to tell you that you had done so now. To me my religion has always been a living thing; my Bible has been my guide. You trampled upon the one some months ago, you have trampled on the other now. You shocked me, Mr. Holland."
"I have always loved you, Phyllis. I think I love you better than I ever did, if that were possible," said he. "I am overwhelmed with grief at the thought of the barrier which your fancy has built up between us."
"Fancy?"
"Your fancy, dear child. I feel that the barrier which you fancy is now between us is unworthy of you."
"What? Do you mean to say that you think that my detestation--my--my horror of your sneers at the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God--of the contempt you have heaped upon the Church which I believe to be God's agent on earth for the salvation of men's souls--do you think that my detestation of these is a mere girlish fancy?"
"I don't think that, Phyllis. What I think is, that if you had ever loved me you would be ready to stand by my side now--to be guided by me in a matter which I have made the study of my life."
"In such matters as these--the value or the worthlessness of the Bible; the value or the worthlessness of the Church--I require no guide, Mr. Holland. I do not need to go to a priest to ask if it is wrong to steal, to covet another's goods, to honor my father---- Oh, I cannot discuss what is so very obvious. The Bible I regard as precious; you think that you are in a position to edit it as if it were an ordinary book. The Church I regard as the Temple of God upon the earth; you think that it exists only to be sneered at? and yet you talk of fanciful barriers between us!"
"I consider it the greatest privilege of a man on earth to be a minister of the Church of Christ."
"Why, then, do you take every opportunity of pointing to it as the greatest enemy to Christianity?"
