"Ned, are you a Catholic?" she said, turning suddenly.
"I was born one, but I have thought little about religion. I have
had other things to think about. What does it matter? Religion
doesn't help us to love one another."
"I should like you better if you were a good Catholic."
"I wonder how that is?" he said, and he admired the round hand and
its pretty articulations, and she closed her hand on his with a
delicious movement.
"I could like you better, Ned, if you were a Catholic.... I think
I could."
"What has my being a good Catholic got to do with your love of
me?"
And he watched the small and somewhat severe profile looking
across the old grey wall into the flat grey sky.
"I did not say I loved you," she said, almost angrily; "but if I
did love you," she said, looking at him tenderly, "and you were
religious, I should be loving something eternal. You don't
understand what I mean? What I am saying to you must seem like
nonsense."
"No, it doesn't, Ellen, only I am content with the reality. I can
love you without wings."
He watched for the look of annoyance in her face that he knew his
words would provoke, but her face was turned away.
"I like you, but I am afraid of you. It is a very strange feeling.
You ran away with a circus and you let the lion die and you went
to fight in Cuba. You have loved other women, and I have never
loved anyone. I never cared for a man until I saw you, until I
looked up from the album."
"I understand very well, Ellen; I knew something was going to
happen to me in Ireland.
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