The horrors had been so dreadful. My nerves,
doubtless, were more than a little overstrained. Absurd as it must
sound, I classed him in my mind with the robins, the happy, confiding
robins who believed in everybody and thought no evil! I laughed a moment
at my ridiculous idea, and my sister, encouraged by this sign of
patience in me, continued more fluently.
"Of course you don't understand, Bill? Why should you? You've never
thought about such things. Needing no creed yourself, you think all
creeds are rubbish."
"I'm open to conviction--I'm tolerant," I interrupted.
"You're as narrow as Sam Franklyn, and as crammed with prejudice," she
answered, knowing that she had me at her mercy.
"Then, pray, what may be his, or his Society's beliefs?" I asked,
feeling no desire to argue, "and how are they going to prove your
Mabel's salvation? Can they bring beauty into all this aggressive hate
and ugliness?"
"Certain hope and peace," she said, "that peace which is understanding,
and that understanding which explains all creeds and therefore tolerates
them."
"Toleration! The one word a religious man loathes above all others! His
pet word is damnation--"
"Tolerates them," she repeated patiently, unperturbed by my explosion,
"because it includes them all.
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