‘Suggest and advise!’ exclaimed the cardinal, laughing in his turn. ‘But, my dear Miss Newman, you suggest earthquakes and advise floods. Do you look upon it as a small matter between ourselves that the Catholic Church of Rome should tell her faithful people all round the globe that the worship of Christ has been found to be a mistake, and that henceforward they are to go in for Venus?’
‘Small or great, Cardinal Power,’ took up Friga, who thought it time to let him see that she was of one mind with her friend, ‘that’s about the state of the case. Better go in for Venus than for another sort of dissipation, especially that passive sort which consists in being scattered to the winds. Cogitavit Domina dissipare murum filiæ Sion. That is the earthquake and the flood you have to fear and to avoid.’
The prelate looked at her in some surprise, then he asked,—
‘I presume, then, that you reject Christianity altogether, Lady Friga?’
‘I reject it in its present form,’ she replied, ‘because it embodies the old curse of man-worship. But let that be put an end to, and the place of Christ may still be found beneath that of his mother; it may be recognised by those who are willing to include Hadrian’s cult of Antinous in the economy of the spiritual world.’
‘So much for masculine divinity,’ observed the cardinal, with quiet sarcasm. ‘I may perhaps, however, be permitted to hope, Lady Friga, that when the new Christianity is promulgated, it will not be found to insist upon Antinomianism as necessary to salvation?’
‘I think we need hardly settle that point now, cardinal,’ said Lesbia. ‘Begin at the beginning; establish divine order first, and see to its corollaries afterwards.’
‘Let doctrine take what shape it will, Cardinal Power,’
