In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike

relieved, as the meeting concluded in a jocular mood, to have put off to a future meeting any real decision. Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit. He marvelled at himself, how the diction of belief had still risen to his lips. Perhaps this afternoon’s revelation would sink harmlessly down within him, to join in unspoken, half-forgotten depths the grotesque sexual dreams and nocturnal emissions of his youth.
    Stella was waiting for him in their bedroom, awake. Shadowshung in the corners, away from the feeble electric bulb whereby she was darning a black sock; she was sitting upright in the mahogany fourposter, in a white cotton nightie and a frilled cap bulged by the containment of her hair. She explained that Mrs. McDermott and Mrs. Dearholt had taken the streetcar home, after a nice chat over the rest of the strawberries and cream. “How was the meeting?” she asked.
    He removed his black coat, hung it tidily over the back of a ladderback chair, and with an upward strain of his jaw and grimace of difficulty undid his detachable celluloid collar. “Dearholt steamrollered for the addition, but I asked them if they weren’t wanting this just to keep up with the Methodists. It gave them a little pause, though I expect they’ll end up going ahead. I should just get out of their way, I suppose, but the Sabbath school is struggling to fill its classes now, with so many of our better families moving out to Clifton and Totowa.” He sat down on the cane-bottomed rocker to remove his black shoes and socks. “Oh, my, Stel dearest, what a weariness I feel! I wonder if I have energy for all this.”
    “All what, Clarence?” From her voice she was still concentrating on the darning threads.
    “All this church—all these good people, wanting something from me no mortal man can provide. All this simulation of zeal.” He could not tell her how even pronouncing words had become a heaviness, now that the true nature of reality was revealed.
There is no God
. Perhaps everybody, back to his professors at Princeton, had known it already.
    “You’ll feel better after a good night’s rest. Little Teddy thought you looked tired.”
    “I heard him, all the way to my end of the table. Poor child, he’s sensitive.”
    “More so than Jared and Esther?” she asked, still squintingat the sock stretched on its wooden egg, picking her way among the black threads. “They’re the ones that get the marks at school.”
    Even attempting to discriminate between his children was in his brain-weariness almost beyond him. “Maybe not. But they’re getting on in life. Both have jobs after school, and Esther has a beau. Teddy’s being left behind.”
    “Not by us.”
    “Ah, I hope not.”
    She glanced up, and decided to ignore the enigma of that remark. “Dinner was spirited, I thought,” she said.
    He had to laugh, even in his stupefaction. The world distracts us from its own ruin. “Spirited is one way to describe it; some might say it was a quarrelsome disaster. You never should have invited Kleist; he’s gone fanatic since they laid him off. He even had our demure Italian guests rallying to the red flag.”
    “It’s healthy for people to exchange frank views,” she said. “It’s good to have the different sorts mix. If you let Paterson’s class factions divide the Christian church, there’s nowhere left where the sides can hear one another. Our Lord was never afraid of a good discussion.” As if fearful of seeming to know his business better than he, she subdued her tone. “That McDermott seems a sweet soul, and Mr. Dearholt means well—he just rubs you the wrong way.”
    “He wants to take over Fourth Presbyterian as his own little business on the side, and the way I’m feeling tonight he can have it.”
    “Why, Clarence, you’re sounding almost sinful! There’s nobody like you around, for learning and compassion.”
    “Compassion! Isn’t that a sickly thing, when as Kleist said the