“An atheist,” says Claire, frequently, “is a fool. Now an agnostic is not a fool. An agnostic says, humbly, ‘_I don’t know_.’ But an atheist, who denies the existence of a God, is a fool.” It is perhaps needless to add that Claire considers herself an agnostic. She generally speaks in capital letters. When she dislikes the course of action, as reported in the _Times_, taken by any politician--and she has a virulent and mutually inconsistent set of dislikes--Claire is apt to remark vivaciously: “All I can say is that So-and-so ought to be taken out and HUNG. Then he wouldn’t talk so much nonsense.” Claire is, of course, an anti-prohibitionist because “just look at America--it’s a perfect farce”--and an anti-feminist because “women can exercise all the influence they want to at home. I should like to see the woman who can’t make her husband vote as she wants him to vote!” Socialism, in which Claire includes the whole of the Labor Party, the Bolsheviks in Russia, and a large number of entirely non-political organizations, she condemns upon the grounds that “it is nonsense to pretend that things could ever be equal. Place everyone upon the same footing in every respect, and in a week some people would have everything and others nothing.” Upon the question of birth control, so freely discussed by our younger relatives, her views might be epitomized (though not by herself, since Claire never epitomizes anything, least of all views of her own). The whole subject is disgusting. All those who write or speak of it are actuated by motives of indecency, and all those who read their writings or listen to their speeches do so from unhealthy curiosity. God Himself has definitely pronounced against any and every form of birth control. Of this last, Claire seems to be especially positive, but I have never been able to find out from her exactly where this revelation of the Almighty’s attitude of mind is to be found. It need scarcely be added that, to Claire, all pacifists are unpatriotic and cowardly, all vegetarians cranks, and all spiritualists either humbugs or hysterical women. Sometimes, but not often, she and I discuss these things. But when I object to sweeping generalities, Claire, unfortunately, feels that I am being something which she labels as “always against” her, and she then not infrequently bursts into tears. Few of our discussions ever survive this stage. It is very curious now to think that fifteen years ago I was madly in love with Claire Ambrey. She refused to marry me until I was smashed up in a flying experiment in America. Then she wrote and said that she loved me and had always loved me and would marry me at once. I suppose I believed this because at the moment I so wanted to believe it, and because also, at the moment she so intensely believed it herself. The generosity and the self-deception were both so like Claire. Her emotional impulses are so violent and her capacity for sustained effort so small.