"We've been victimized," said she. "This farm-life stuff has been immensely over-rated."
"You mean you don't like it?" he queried.
"That," she told him, "only expresses my true feelings vaguely. I think it is ghastly."
Chapter XIX
Madame Leota was thankful to be back in her own apartment. Her visit to the Black Hills had been a disappointment. It was a marvelous country, dear air, clear skies and mountains that reached for the moon. As a place of residence it lacked nothing. The deficiency lay in Madame. Her love of the country was sheer fallacy. It was a false dream.
"After all," she murmured wearily, "so few of us ever learn to dream true."
Seated opposite her in a great armchair before the fireplace was Ivan Alter. He gazed moodily into it. There was no pine-log burning. Only dead ashes remained.
He said reflectively: "Dreaming true. What a beautiful subject for a sermon. But where could one find a minister worthy of such a subject? I wonder how many ministers, rabbis and priests would be able to hold their jobs if all their appointments had to be approved by God? Understand I'm not sacrilegious. I believe there is a great spirituality all about us, something fine and great and awesome, which we cannot perceive because our knowledge is still in transition. Flowers are greater than people because they are more spiritual. They are capable of recording finer shades of emotion. The human body is still a crude machine. There are sermons in stones, in the wind whispering in the treetops, in the deep blue hush of the night sky. Dawn is a prayer of hope. Sunset is a benediction. There is religion in nature and we breathe it in with the air we take into our lungs. God is all about us, in the earth and the skies. But I'm not sure that
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