He paused.  Olga was listening with rapt attention.  Her tears were gone, but the clasp of her hand was feverishly tense.  Her breath came quickly.

“Go on, Nick!” she whispered.  “Tell me more of the things you believe!”

He smiled whimsically.  “My dear, I’m afraid I’m not over-orthodox.  You see, I’ve knocked about a bit and seen something of other men’s beliefs.  The love of God is the backbone of my religion, and all that doesn’t go with that, I discarded long ago.  If Christianity doesn’t mean that, it doesn’t mean anything.  I’ve no use for the people who think that none but their own select little circle will go to heaven.  Such Gargantuan smugness takes one’s breath away.  It is almost too colossal to be funny.  One wonders where on earth they get it from.  I suppose it’s a survival of the Dark Ages, but even then surely people had brains of some description.”

“But death, Nick!” she said.  “Death is such a baffling kind of thing.”

“Yes, I know.  You can’t grasp it or fathom it.  You can only project your love into it and be quite sure that it finds a hold on the other side.  Why, my dear girl, that’s what love is for.  It’s the connecting link that God Himself is bound to recognize because it is of His own forging.  Don’t you see—­don’t you know it is Divine?  That is why our love can hold so strongly—­even through Death.  Just because it is part of His plan—­a link in the everlasting Chain that draws the whole world up to Paradise at last.  It’s so divinely simple.  One wonders how anyone can miss the meaning of it.”

Olga’s rapt face relaxed.  She smiled at him—­a very loving, comprehending smile.  “Yes, I see it when you put it like that, Nick, of course.  It is only just at first Death seems so staggering—­such a plunge into the dark.”

“But there is nothing in the dark to frighten us,” Nick said.  “If some of us died and some didn’t, it would be terrible, I grant.  But we are all going sooner or later.  No one is left behind for long.  To my mind there’s a vast deal of comfort in that.  It doesn’t leave much time for grousing when we simply can’t help moving on.”

She squeezed his hand.  “I wonder where I’d be without you, Nick.”

Nick’s grin flashed magically across his face.  “I’m only a man, kiddie,” he observed, “and I seem to have been gassing somewhat immoderately.  However, them’s my sentiments, and you can take ’em or leave ’em according to fancy.”

Thereafter for a space they talked of Violet, touching no tragic note, recalling her as an absent friend.  Olga dwelt fondly upon the thought of her, scarcely realizing her loss.  The new life she had entered had done much to soften the blow when it should fall.  Here in a strange land she did not feel her friend’s death as she would inevitably have felt it at Weir.  Circumstances combined with Nick’s sheltering presence to lift the weight which otherwise must have pressed heavily upon her.  Moreover, the longer