and often a silly one; but all were equally game to her. I found her
amusing and interesting for two days, but then began to see she only led
nothing nowhere. She was touchy, and jealous, and said things that
disgusted me; never did anything for anybody; and though she hunted
religious ideas most, never seemed to imagine they could have anything
to do with her life. It was only the fineness of a good thought even
that she seemed to prize. She would startle you any moment by an
exclamation of delight at some religious fancy or sentimentality, and
down it most go in her book, but it went no further than her book: she
was just as common as before, vulgar even, in her judgments of motives
and actions. She seemed made for a refined and delicate woman, but not
to take the trouble to be what she was made for. You told me, you know,
that God makes us, but _we_ have to be. She talked about afflictions as
one might of manure: by these afflictions, of which she would complain
bitterly, she was being fashioned for life eternal! It was all the most
dreary, noisome rubbish I had ever come across. I used to lie awake
thinking what could ever rouse such a woman to see that she had to _do_
something; that man nor woman can become anything without having a hand
in the matter. She seemed to expect the spirit of God to work in her
like yeast in flour, although there was not a sign of the dough rising.
That is how I came to see that one may have any number of fine thoughts
and fancies and be nothing the better, any more than the poor woman in
the gospel with her doctors! And when Walter, the next time he came
home, talked as he did about thoughts, and quoted Keats to the same
effect, as if the finest thing in the universe were a fine thought, I
could not bear it, and that made me speak to him as I did."

"You have made it very clear, Molly; and I quite agree with you: thinks
are of no use except they be turned into things."