There was a roguish twinkle in her eye. She well knew that he
thought as she did on metaphysical questions, but she could not
resist teasing him.

Like Jefferson, she was not a member of any church, although her
nature was deeply religious. Hers was the religion the soul
inculcates, not that which is learned by rote in the temple. She
was a Christian because she thought Christ the greatest figure in
world history, and also because her own conduct of life was
modelled upon Christian principles and virtues. She was religious
for religion's sake and not for public ostentation. The mystery of
life awed her and while her intelligence could not accept all the
doctrines of dogmatic religion she did not go so far as Jefferson,
who was a frank agnostic. She would not admit that we do not know.
The longings and aspirations of her own soul convinced her of the
existence of a Supreme Being, First Cause, Divine Intelligence--call
it what you will--which had brought out of chaos the wonderful
order of the universe. The human mind was, indeed, helpless to
conceive such a First Cause in any form and lay prostrate before
the Unknown, yet she herself was an enthusiastic delver into
scientific hypothesis and the teachings of Darwin, Spencer,
Haeckel had satisfied her intellect if they had failed to content
her soul. The theory of evolution as applied to life on her own
little planet appealed strongly to her because it accounted
plausibly for the presence of man on earth. The process through
which we had passed could be understood by every intelligence. The
blazing satellite, violently detached from the parent sun starting
on its circumscribed orbit--that was the first stage, the gradual
subsidence of the flames and the cooling of the crust--the second