“Yes,” he was saying, “we are taught to think ourselves of a mighty deal of importance.  How we fare and what we do is set before us as a thing about which angels rejoice or mourn.  The state of our little minds, or souls, or whatever it is, is a matter of deep care to the Creator—­the Life of the universe.  How can it be?  How are we more than minutest points in that picture in his mind, which is the world?  I speak in human metaphor, as one must speak.  In truth, we are at once a fraction, a tiny fraction—­oh! what a tiny fraction—­of the picture, and the like little jot of what it exists for.  And does what comes to us matter very much—­whether we walk a little more or a little less cleanly—­aim a little higher or lower, if there is a higher and lower?  What matter?  Ah, Eugene, our parents and our pastors teach us vanity!  To me it seems pitiful.  Let us take our little sunshine, doing as little harm and giving as little pain as we may, living as long as we can, and doing our little bit of useful work for the ground when we are dead, if we did none for the world when we were living.  If you cremate, you will deprive many people of their only utility.”

Eugene gently laughed.

“Of course you put it as unattractively as you can.”

“Yes; but I can’t put it unattractively enough to be true.  I used to fret and strive, and think archangels hung on my actions.  There are none; and if there were, what would they care for me?  I am a part of it, I suppose—­a part of the Red King’s dream, as Alice says.  But what a little part!  I do well if I suffer little and give little suffering, and so quietly go to help the cabbages.”

“I don’t think I believe it,” said Eugene.

“I suppose not.  It’s hard to believe and impossible to disbelieve.”

Stafford listened intently.  Memories came back to him of books he had read and put behind him; books wherein Ayre had found his creed, if the thing could be called a creed.  Was that true?  Was he rending his soul for nothing?  A day earlier such a thought would have been to him at once a torture and a sin.  Now he found a strange comfort in it.  Why strive and cry, when none watched the effort or heard the agony?  Why torture himself?  Why torture others?  If the world were good, why was he not to have his part?  If it were bad, might he not find a quiet nook under the wall, out of the storm?  Why must he try to breast it?  If Ayre was right, what a tragical farce his struggle was, what a perverse delusion, what an aimless flinging away of the little joy his little life could offer!  If this were so, then was he indeed alone in the world—­except for Claudia.  Was his choice in truth between this world and the next?  He might throw one away and never find the other.