"I didn't in the least suppose that you would. You will in time. My
part of the temptation is to show you all sorts of ethical jugglery,
the spiritual and intellectual gymnastics such as the Bostonians love;
to persuade you that all religion is only a sort of pastime, and that
the particular high-church sort which you especially affect is but one
of a great many entertaining ways of killing time."

"Cousin Diana!" he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.

"I hope that you understand," she continued unmoved. "I shall exhibit a
very pretty collection of fads to you if we see them all."

"But suppose," he said slowly, "that I refused to go with you?"

"But you won't," returned she, with that curious smile which always
teased him with its suggestion of irony. "In the first place you
couldn't be so impolite as to refuse me. A woman may always lead a man
into questionable paths if she puts it to his sense of chivalry not to
desert her. In the second, the spirit of the age is a good deal
stronger in you than you realize, and the truth is that you wouldn't be
left behind for anything. In the third, you could hardly be so cowardly
as to run away from the temptation that is to prove whether you were
really born to be a priest."

"That was decided when I entered the Clergy House."

"Nonsense; nothing of the sort, my dear boy. The only thing that was
decided then was that you thought you were. Wait and see our ethical
and religious raree-shows. We had the Persian to-day; to-morrow I'm to
take you to a spiritualist sitting at Mrs. Rangely's. She hates to