IV
“What are we going to do, dear?” Bess said wearily. “I’ll stand by you, of course, but let’s be practical. Don’t you think it would make less trouble if you did resign?”
“I’ve done nothing for which to resign! I’ve led a thoroughly decent life. I haven’t lied or been indecent or stolen. I’ve preached imagination, happiness, justice, seeking for the truth. I’m no sage, Heaven knows, but I’ve given my people a knowledge that there are such things as ethnology and biology, that there are books like Ethan Frome and Père Goriot and Tono-Bungay and Renan’s Jesus, that there is nothing wicked in looking straight at life—”
“Dear, I said practical!”
“Oh, thunder, I don’t know. I think I can get a job in the Charity Organization Society here—the general secretary happens to be pretty liberal.”
“I hate to have us leave the church entirely. I’m sort of at home there. Why not see if they’d like to have you in the Unitarian Church?”
“Too respectable. Scared. Same old sanctified phrases I’m trying to get rid of—and won’t ever quite get rid of, I’m afraid.”