Then insensibly their conversation took a graver tone, and they passed to other themes, which, to Constance at least, had a deeper and more enduring interest. In all philosophical questions she could follow and even go beyond him, although she didn't know it, and very soon they made the discovery that towards the faith still professed by a large majority of their fellow-beings their attitude was the same. Or so it appeared to Constance. Christianity was one of the forms in which the universal religious sentiment had found expression for a period among a large portion of the human race. They were not agnostics, so they both declared, and yet were contented to be called so by others, not yet having invented a word better than this one of the materialistic Professor Huxley to describe themselves by. They had moved onwards and had left the creed of the Christian behind them, yet were confident that the vast unbounded prospect before them would not always rest obscured with clouds. But what the new thing was to be they knew not. Time would reveal it. They were not left without something to cheer them--gleams of a spiritual light which, although dim and transient, yet foretold the perfect day. Like so many others among the choice spirits of the earth, they turned their eyes this way and that, considering now the hard and pitiless facts of biology and physics, now the new systems of philosophy, that come like shadows and so depart, and now the vague thoughts, or thoughts vaguely expressed, of those the careless world calls mystics and wild-minded visionaries; and after it all they were fain to confess that the waters have not yet abated; and that although for them there could be no return to the ark, they were still without any rest for the soles of their feet. If, instead of that young ignorant girl, their listener had been a grey-haired disillusioned man, he would have shaken his head, and perhaps remarked that they were a couple of foolish dreamers, that the light which inspired such splendid hopes was a light from the past--a dying twilight left in their souls by that sun of faith which for them had set. But there was nothing to disturb their pleasing self-complacency--no mocking skeleton to spoil their rare intellectual feast. Merton was not yet satisfied, he wished to go more fully into these great subjects, and pressed her with more and more searching questions. Constance, on her side, grew more reticent, and seemed troubled in her mind, glancing occasionally into his face; and at length, dropping her hand on Fan's, who still listened but without understanding, she said that for reasons which could not be stated, which he would be able to guess, further discussion had better be deferred.