"You spoke of this life," continued Lottie, "as if it were nothing, and as if God didn't care--indeed approved of our having a hard time here, that we might be more sure of a good time hereafter. You spoke of God as jealously watching, lest we should love earthly friends more than Him, and said that He was bound to be first, if He had to snatch away everything that we loved most. Therefore, even the mother must keep chilling her natural love for her child, or else God will make the innocent little thing suffer and die, just to give the mother a lesson. You said that we should hold all earthly possessions in fear and trembling, and that the harsher our experiences were, here, the better, if they only wean us from earth. If this is true, we had better have no possessions and form no ties. The monks and nuns are right. Let us shut ourselves up, and wear hair-cloth instead of merino, and catch our death of cold by moping around bare-foot at all unseasonable hours. All you said may be good religion, but it's mighty poor sense, and very unnatural." Hemstead shaded his burning face with his hands. "There, I knew I should hurt you. No doubt I seem very irreverent, but you have no idea how I am restraining myself for your sake. I'm just that provoked and indignant--Well, well, what's the use? As you said, we can't help ourselves, and into the fiery furnace Lottie Marsden will go before long; only there will be nothing left of me but a little cinder. Why couldn't the Being you call all-wise and all-powerful, devise some nicer way, one more in accordance with the nature He has given us? Suppose heaven is a grander place than this world, that is no good reason for hating the world. This earth is our present home, and it looks sensible that we should make the most of it, and enjoy ourselves in it. Suppose my father should say, 'Lottie, I want you to hate and despise your present home, because in five years I'm going to give you a palace; and if you can only fall downstairs once or twice, and have a fit of illness so as to get weaned from it, I shall be glad.' "How strangely and monstrously unnatural all that kind of talk is when you come to put it into plain English!" proceeded Lottie after a moment, tapping the floor impatiently with her foot. "If you must preach such doctrines as you did this morning, I am sorry for you; and, if they are true, I am sorry for the world, myself included. The trouble is not in you. I am sure you can make almost an orator in time, if you can get a theme that won't give men the shivers, and set their teeth on edge. I never understood religion and never liked it; and now that I do begin to understand it, I like it less than ever." Hemstead sat down in his chair,--indeed he sank into it, and the face he turned toward her was white and full of pain. "Miss Marsden," he said slowly, "I fear I have given you, and all who heard me, a very false impression of God and Christianity; and yet I thought I was speaking the truth."