“You don’t mean,” broke in Bastin with a horrified air, “that you propose to dispense—­”

“No, Bastin, I don’t mean that.  What I mean is that it comes upon me that something will prevent this marriage.  Sacrifice, perhaps, though in what shape I do not know.  And now good night.  I am tired.”

That night in the chill dead hour before the dawn Oro came again.  I woke up to see him seated by my bed, majestic, and, as it seemed to me, lambent, though this may have been my imagination.

“You take strange liberties with my daughter, Barbarian, or she takes strange liberties with you, it does not matter which,” he said, regarding me with his calm and terrible eyes.

“Why do you presume to call me Barbarian?” I asked, avoiding the main issue.

“For this reason, Humphrey.  All men are the same.  They have the same organs, the same instincts, the same desires, which in essence are but two, food and rebirth that Nature commands; though it is true that millions of years before I was born, as I have learned from the records of the Sons of Wisdom, it was said that they were half ape.  Yet being the same there is between them a whole sea of difference, since some have knowledge and others none, or little.  Those who have none or little, among whom you must be numbered, are Barbarians.  Those who have much, among whom my daughter and I are the sole survivors, are the Instructed.”

“There are nearly two thousand millions of living people in this world,” I said, “and you name all of them Barbarians?”

“All, Humphrey, excepting, of course, myself and my daughter who are not known to be alive.  You think that you have learned much, whereas in truth you are most ignorant.  The commonest of the outer nations, when I destroyed them, knew more than your wisest know today.”

“You are mistaken, Oro; since then we have learned something of the soul.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “that interests me and perhaps it is true.  Also, if true it is very important, as I have told you before—­or was it Bastin?  If a man has a soul, he lives, whereas even we Sons of Wisdom die, and in Death what is the use of Wisdom?  Because you can believe, you have souls and are therefore, perhaps, heirs to life, foolish and ignorant as you are today.  Therefore I admit you and Bastin to be my equals, though Bickley, who like myself believes nothing, is but a common chemist and doctor of disease.”

“Then you bow to Faith, Oro?”

“Yes, and I think that my god Fate also bows to Faith.  Perhaps, indeed, Faith shapes Fate, not Fate, Faith.  But whence comes that faith which even I with all my learning cannot command?  Why is it denied to me and given to you and Bastin?”

“Because as Bastin would tell you, it is a gift, though one that is never granted to the proud and self-sufficient.  Become humble as a child, Oro, and perchance you too may acquire faith.”

“And how shall I become humble?”