“I thought you hated it too.”

“Oh, I hate nothing now,” replied Esther, with a little of her old laugh.  “I am learning to like every thing.”

“Is that in the marriage service?” asked Strong.  “Do you have to begin so high up?  Couldn’t you start easy, and like a few things first,—­me for instance—­and let the rest wait?”

“No,” she said, “you are to come last.  Honestly, I am more afraid of you than of all the rest of the world.  If you knew what a bug-bear you are to me, you would be afraid of yourself.  Don’t make fun of me any more!  I know I am horribly funny, but you must take me in earnest.  Poor papa’s last words to me were:  ’Laugh and you’re safe!’—­but if I laugh now, I’m lost.”

“This is the first time I ever met any one honest enough to acknowledge that marriage was so sad a thing.  Catherine, if I ask you to marry me, will you turn serious?”

“She will turn serious enough if she does it,” said Esther.  “You would stay with her a week, and then tell her that you were obliged to see a friend in Japan.  She would never see you again, but the newspapers would tell her that you had set out to look for bones in the Milky Way.”

“What you say sounds to me as though it had a grain of truth,” replied Strong.  “That reminds me that I got a letter telling me of a lot of new bones only yesterday, but I must leave them underground till the summer; if by that time I can do any thing for you in Oregon, let me know.”

“I want you very much to do something for me now,” said Esther.  “Will you try to be serious a moment for my sake?”

“I don’t know,” said Strong.  “You ask too much all at once.  Where are you coming out?”

“Will you answer me a question?  Say yes or no!”

“That depends on the question, Mistress Esther!  Old birds are not to be caught in old traps.  State your question, as we say in the lecture-room.”

“Is religion true?”

“I thought so!  Cousin Esther, I love you as much as I love any one in this cold world, but I can’t answer your question.  I can tell you all about the mound-builders or cave-men, so far as known, but I could not tell you the difference between the bones of a saint and those of a heathen.  Ask me something easier!  Ask me whether science is true!”

“Is science true?”

“No!”

“Then why do you believe in it?”

“I don’t believe in it.”

“Then why do you belong to it?”

“Because I want to help in making it truer.  Now, Esther, just take this matter coolly!  You are bothered, I suppose, by the idea that you can’t possibly believe in miracles and mysteries, and therefore can’t make a good wife for Hazard.  You might just as well make yourself unhappy by doubting whether you would make a good wife to me because you can’t believe the first axiom in Euclid.  There is no science which does not begin by requiring you to believe the incredible.”