6It was a little after ten o’clock. Various things had happened – nothing, however, of any particular importance; only the usual round of parish jobs that filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening. Now, as she had arranged earlier in the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her.
They were talking – but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manœuvre the conversation towards this subject – about the question of religious belief.
‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian cigar. ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your age – twenty-seven, I believe – and with you
