George was a little louder, and his manners were more studied. Alexa felt him overblown. He was floridly at his ease. What little “atmosphere” there had been about him was gone, and its place taken by a colored fog. His dress was unobjectionable, and yet attracted notice; perhaps it was only too considered. Alexa was disappointed, and a little relieved. He looked older, yet not more manly--and rather fat. He had more of the confidence women dislike to see a man without, than was quite pleasant even to the confident Alexa. His speech was not a little infected with the nasality--as easy to catch as hard to get rid of--which I presume the Puritans carried from England to America. On the whole, George was less interesting than Alexa had expected. He came to her as if he would embrace her, but an instinctive movement on her part sufficed to check him. She threw an additional heartiness into her welcome, and kept him at arm's-length. She felt as if she had lost an old friend, and not gained a new one. He made himself very agreeable, but that he made himself so, made him less so. There was more than these changes at work in her; there was still the underlying doubt concerning him. Although not yet a live soul, she had strong if vague ideas about right and wrong; and although she sought many things a good deal more than righteousness, I do not see what temptation would at once have turned her from its known paths. At the same time I do not see what she had yet, more than hundreds of thousands of well-meaning women, to secure her from slow decay and final ruin. They laughed and talked together very _like_ the way they used, but “every like is not the same,” and they knew there was a difference. George was stung by the sense of it--too much to show that he was vexed. He laid himself out to be the more pleasing, as if determined to make her feel what he was worth--as the man, namely, whom he imagined himself, and valued himself on being. It is an argument for God, to see what fools those make of themselves who, believing there is a God, do not believe _in_ Him--children who do not know the Father. Such make up the mass of church and chapel goers. Let an earthquake or the small-pox break loose among them, and they will show what sort their religion is. George had got rid of the folly of believing in the existence of a God, either interested in human affairs or careless of them, and naturally found himself more comfortable in consequence; for he never had believed _in_ God, and it is awkward to believe and not believe at the same moment. What he had called his _beliefs_ were as worthy of the name as those of most people, but whether he was better or worse without them hardly interests me, and my philanthropy will scarce serve to make me glad that he was more comfortable.