Marc did not dislike going about in this way, with his hand in his mother's, listening, whispering. It was sweet, it was warm, it was delightful. . . . Yes, if it didn't last too long. This sentimental somnolence bored him. He needed to move about and think of definite things. His little mind worked away, observed, noticed this crowd of praying people, watched his mother, who did not pray. And without expressing them he made his own reflexions. He asked few questions, much fewer than most children would have asked, for he was very proud and he was afraid of saying something naïve. But he did ask, "Mother, who is God?" "I don't know, my dear," she replied. "Then what do you know?" She smiled and pressed him against her. "I know that I love you." Yes, the old story. He knew this, but it was not worth coming to church for. He was not very sensitive and he had no taste for the vague soulfulness in which "these women" delighted. Annette, when she had her child beside her, when she was without too many material cares, during an hour of relaxation earned amid the tasks that pursued her, was happy. She did not have to go very far to find God: he was in her heart. But Marc had found in his heart nothing but himself, Marc: everything else was mere foolishness. He had to be clear about things. Just what was this God? The man up there over the altar, with his girlish petticoat and his gilded shell? The verger with his staff and his exposed calves? Those painted-up images--one in each chapel--that grinned at you with their sickly smiles like embarrassed ladies whom he didn't like? "Mamma, let's go on." "But isn't this beautiful?" "Yes, it's beautiful enough. Let's go home." What was God? . . . He no longer insisted on asking his mother. When grown-ups confess that they do not know something, it is because they are not interested in it. . . . He continued his rather impatient inquiry alone. He heard prayers, "Our Father who art in heaven"--a localization that excited the scepticism of the more wide-awake of these modern cubs for whom heaven was on the point of becoming a new field of sport. He thumbed the Bible, along with other old stories, with a bored curiosity, asked a few questions, caught a few replies, here and there, with a negligent air--"God, some invisible person who created the world." That was what they said. It was too far off. And not clear. He was like his mother: God did not interest him. One king more or less. . . .