"Oh, no," she replied, and her voice suddenly sounded strangely low and earnest, as if she were speaking only to herself; "but I know that I seek truth and allow myself to be led astray by no external delusion, peril, or reward. No more can be required of any one, but no human being should demand less from himself. I don't know why I am saying this to you; I see by your puzzled face that it is a language wholly unfamiliar. Well, I have neither taste nor talent for converting any one. I shall thank God if I can conquer myself." She bent over a bed to straighten a young cabbage-plant that had just been set out and was half trodden down. "Fraeulein," I said, once more fully conscious of my ecclesiastical dignity, "has not God himself pointed out to us the way in which we must seek him? And is it not boastful to disdain this allotted way and seek a side-path, merely in order to be able to say to ourselves that we do not follow the high-road?" She straightened herself, and flashed a glance at me from her dark eyes, which she always closed a little when angry. "Boastful!" she answered. "If food that neither satisfies nor nourishes is offered, and I can break from some bough fruit that suits me better! Boastful, because I do not wish to starve! That is only another of those speeches learned by rote. You do not even suspect how much you yourself suffer from arrogance." Then, after a pause, during which I persistently asked myself, "Good Heavens! what am I to do? how shall I say anything that does not displease her?" she added: "I will tell you why the high-road is so detestable to me: because I can not bear to hear strangers chatter thoughtlessly about things I love. If I revere any human being, it always seems to me like a desecration to hear him approved and praised by others who do not know him so well; how much more when I hear all sorts of things said about my Creator, things which distort the image of him I cherish in my heart! I suddenly turn as cold as ice, and feel as much oppressed as if he were taken from me, and strangers were pressing between us. Whoever really loves God keeps that love secretly, does not repeat others' protestations of affection, nor use worn-out forms of speech already employed a thousand times. It seems to me like having a love-letter copied from a letter-writer. You know the passage in the Bible that says we must go to our closets and shut the door. Yet you come forward publicly and preach your petty human wisdom, as if you were thereby doing God a special favor. If you had a wife, would you not be ashamed to plant yourself in the village street and protest that she was a paragon of her sex?" "Oh," I said, "how can you make such a comparison! God belongs to no one person alone." "Do you really believe so? I think, on the contrary, that God belongs to every human being alone. He dwells in a special way in each human soul, and whoever does not feel this has not received him into his heart at all."