CHAPTER X
A REMEMBRANCE
It was in the vastness of Westminster Hall that I saw her for the
first time--saw her pointed face, her red hair, her brilliant teeth.
The next time was in her own home--a farm-house that had been rebuilt
and was half a villa. At the back were wheat-stacks, a noisy
thrashing-machine, a pigeon-cote, and stables whence, with jangle of
harness and cries of yokels, the great farm-horses always seemed to be
coming from or going to their work on the downs. In a garden planted
with variegated firs she tended her flowers all day; and in the
parlour, where we assembled in the evening, her husband smoked his
pipe in silence; the young ladies, their blonde hair hanging down
their backs, played waltzes; she alone talked. Her conversation was
effusive, her laughter abundant and bright. I had only just turned
eighteen, and was deeply interested in religious problems, and one day
I told her the book I carried in my pocket, and sometimes pretended to
study, was Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." My explanation of the
value of the work did not seem to strike her, and her manifest want of
interest in the discussion of religious problems surprised me, for she
passed for a religious woman, and I failed to understand how mere
belief could satisfy any one.
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