We were sitting on the lowest step of a high, square tomb, moss-grown and lichen-covered. The yellow lichens had almost effaced the long list of the virtues of the man on whose breast this stone had lain, as itself in round capitals protested, since the year of grace 1703. The sharp-leafed ivy grew thickly over one side of it, and the long, uncut grass came up between the cracks of its stone steps. "It's all very well," she said severely. "Don't be angry," I implored. "How can you be angry when the bats are flying black against the rose sky, when the owl is waking up--his is a soft, fluffy awakening--and wondering if it's breakfast time?" "I won't be angry," she said. "Besides the owl, it's disrespectful to the dear, sleepy, dead people to be angry in a churchyard. But if I were really superstitious, you know, I should be afraid to come here at night." "At the end of the day," I corrected. "It is not night yet. Tell me before the night comes all the wonderful things you believe. Recite your _credo_." "Don't be flippant. I don't suppose I believe more unlikely things than you do. You believe in algebra and Euclid and log--what's-his-names. Now I don't believe a word of all that." "We have it on the best authority that by getting up early you can believe six impossible things before breakfast." "But they're not impossible. Don't you see that's just it? The things I like to believe are the very things that _might_ be true. And they're relics of a prettier time than ours, a time when people believed in ghosts and fairies and witches and the devil--oh, yes! and in God and His angels, too. Now the times are bound in yellow brick, and we believe in nothing but ... Euclid and--and company prospectuses and patent medicines." When she is a little angry she is very charming, but it was too dark for me to see her face. "Then," I asked, "it is merely the literary sense that leads you to make the Holy Sign when you find two knives crossed on your table, or to knock under the table and cry 'Unberufen' when you have provoked the Powers with some kind word of the destiny they have sent you?" "I don't," she said. "I don't talk foreign languages." "You say, 'unbecalled for,' I know, but this is mere subterfuge. Is it the literary sense that leads you to treasure farthings, to refuse to give pins, to object to a dinner party of thirteen, to fear the plucking of the golden elder, to avoid coming back to the house when once you've started, even if you've forgotten your prayer-book or your umbrella, to decline to pass under a ladder--" "I always go under a ladder," she interrupted, ignoring the other counts; "it only means you won't be married for seven years." "I never go under ladders. Tell me, is it the literary sense?"