"No, it's not," Vance repeated vehemently. He felt now that he must speak out, at whatever cost to her feelings and his. "Those people last night were mostly well-educated, cultivated—some of the men were students of theology, scholars. They were there because they take an intellectual interest in religious ideas… ." He hurried on, trying to explain that, to such an audience, there was no novelty in what Mrs. Scrimser had to say, that her "revelation" belonged to a long-classified category of religious emotionalism. People had thought for centuries that God had given them a particular message, he went on. But supposing any direct access to the Divine to be possible, it was one of the great services of the organized churches to have maintained an authorized channel of communication between the Deity and men, and not to recognize any other.

"But, Vanny, that's the way the old tyrannical religions talked. All that's got nothing to do with the modern world. What people want nowadays is a new religion—"

Well, he interrupted her, if that was it, what she called her religion wasn't new; it had been in the air for centuries; and anyhow, even if it had been new, that was no particular recommendation. The greatest proof of the validity of a religion was its age, its duration, its having stood through centuries of change, as something that people had to have, couldn't in any age get on without. Couldn't she feel the beauty of continuity in the spiritual world, when the other was being pulled down and rebuilt every morning? Couldn't she see that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was sheer ignorance and illiteracy that made people call things new—that even in the brick-and-mortar world that was being forever pulled down and rebuilt, the old materials and the old conceptions had to be used again in the rebuilding? Who wanted a new religion, anyhow, when the old one was there, so little exhausted or even understood, in all its age-long beauty?

He pressed on, so possessed by his subject that the words came of themselves, as they had when he had poured out his soul to Halo Tarrant: all unconsciously, he had yielded again to the boyish hope that his grandmother would be able to follow his reasoning.

She listened with bent head, and then lifted a face humbled yet admiring. "Yes, yes, I see what you mean, Vanny," she began eagerly—and even as she spoke he remembered that she had always said that, had always believed that she saw what people meant; but whereas in his boyhood he had retorted brutally: "No, you don't!" now he only mumbled: "Oh, well, I don't know that it matters so much about seeing… ."

Her face lit up. "No; that's it. Feeling's everything, isn't it, dear?"

"Well, I didn't mean that, either. I only meant—"