alien from the delicate balance and absence of extremes that should
characterise the gentlewoman. She was of the old _régime_; I of the
stuff from which fanatics are made: and I have often thought, in
looking back, that she must have had on her lips many a time unspoken
a phrase that dropped from them when she lay a-dying: "My little one,
you have never made me sad or sorry except for your own sake; you have
always been too religious." And then she murmured to herself: "Yes,
it has been darling Annie's only fault; she has always been too
religious." Methinks that, as the world judges, the dying voice spake
truly, and the dying eyes saw with a real insight. For though I was
then kneeling beside her bed, heretic and outcast, the heart of me was
religious in its very fervour of repudiation of a religion, and in its
rebellious uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason and did not
satisfy the soul. I went out into the darkness alone, not because
religion was too good for me, but because it was not good enough; it
was too meagre, too commonplace, too little exacting, too bound up
with earthly interests, too calculating in its accommodations to
social conventionalities. The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured
me, as it nearly did, would have sent me on some mission of danger and
sacrifice and utilised me as a martyr; the Church established by law
transformed me into an unbeliever and an antagonist.

For as a child I was mystical and imaginative religious to the very
finger-tips, and with a certain faculty for seeing visions and
dreaming dreams. This faculty is not uncommon with the Keltic races,
and makes them seem "superstitious" to more solidly-built peoples.
Thus, on the day of my father's funeral, my mother sat with vacant
eyes and fixed pallid face--the picture comes back to me yet, it so
impressed my childish imagination--following the funeral service,
stage after stage, and suddenly, with the words, "It is all over!"