"I wish you would find a less disagreeable companion then!--one that would at least be as good as nobody! I am sorry I don't know how to give you room. I would if I could. Tell me how." Again Ian turned to her: was it possible there were tears in her voice? But her black eyes were flashing in the starlight! "Did you ever read Zanoni?" he asked. "I never heard of it. What is it?" "A romance of Bulwer's." "My father won't let us read anything of Bulwer's. Does he write very wicked books?" "The one I speak of," said Ian, "is not wicked, though it is full of rubbish, and its religion is very false." Whether Mercy meant to take her revenge on him with consciously bad logic, I am in doubt. "Captain Macruadh! you astonish me! A Scotchman speak so of religion!" "I spoke of the religion in that book. I said it was false--which is the same as saying it was not religion." "Then religion is not all true!" "All true religion is true," said Ian, inclined to laugh like one that thought to catch an angel, and had clutched a bat! "I was going on to say that, though the religion and philosophy of the book were rubbish, the story was fundamentally a grand conception. It puzzles me to think how a man could start with such an idea, and work it out so well, and yet be so lacking both in insight and logic. It is wonderful how much of one portion of our nature may be developed along with so little of another!" "What is the story about?" asked Mercy. "What I may call the canvas of it, speaking as if it were a picture, is the idea that the whole of space is full of life; that, as the smallest drop of water is crowded with monsters of hideous forms and dispositions, so is what we call space full of living creatures,--" "How horrible!" "--not all monsters, however. There are among them creatures not altogether differing from us, but differing much from each other,--" "As much as you and I?" "--some of them lovely and friendly, others frightful in their beauty and malignity,--" "What nonsense!" "Why do you call it nonsense?" "How could anything beautiful be frightful?" "I ought not to have said BEAUTIFUL. But the frightfullest face I ever saw ought to have been the finest. When the lady that owned it spoke to me, I shivered." "But anyhow the whole thing is nonsense!" "How is it nonsense?" "Because there are no such creatures." "How do you know that? Another may have seen them though you and I never did!" "You are making game of me! You think to make me believe anything you choose!" "Will you tell me something you do believe?" "That you may prove immediately that I do not believe it!" she retorted, with more insight than he had expected. "--You are not very entertaining!" "Would you like me to tell you a story then?" "Will it be nonsense?" "No." "I should like a little nonsense." "You are an angel of goodness, and as wise as you are lovely!" said Ian.