“You have formulated a certain fashion of belief, Mr. Linford, one I dare say appealing to minds that have not yet learned that even reason must submit to authority; but you must admit that this revelation of God in the human heart carries no authoritative assurance of immortality.”

Bernal had been sitting in some embarrassment, dismayed at his own vehemence, but this challenge stirred him.

“True,” he answered, “but let us thank God for uncertainty, if it take the place of Christian belief in a sparsely peopled heaven and a crowded hell.”

“Really, you know—­”

“I know nothing of a future life; but I prefer ignorance to a belief that the most heinous baby that ever died in sin is to languish in a state of damnation—­even ‘in a wide sense’ as our good friend puts it.”

“But, surely, that is the first great question of all people in all ages—­’If a man die shall he live again?’

“Because there has never been any dignified conception of a Supreme Being.  I have tried to tell you what my own faith is—­faith in a God wiser and more loving than I am, who, being so, has devised no mean little scheme of revenge such as you preach.  A God more loving than my own human father, a God whose plan is perfect whether it involve my living or dying.  Whether I shall die to life or to death is not within my knowledge; but since I know of a truth that the God I believe in must have a scheme of worth and dignity, I am unconcerned.  Whether his plan demand extinction or immortality, I worship him for it, not holding him to any trivial fancy of mine.  God himself can be no surer of his plan’s perfection than I am.  I call this faith—­faith the more perfect that it is without condition, asking neither sign nor miracle.”

“And life is so good that I’ve no time to whine.  If this ego of mine is presently to become unnecessary in the great Plan, my faith is still triumphant.  It would be interesting to know the end, but it’s not so important as to know that I am no better—­only a little wiser in certain ways—­than yesterday’s murderer.  Living under the perfect plan of a perfect Creator, I need not trouble about hidden details when so many not hidden are more vital.  When, in some far-off future, we learn to live here as fully and beautifully as we have power to, I doubt not that in the natural ways of growth we shall learn more of this detail of life we call ’death’—­but I can imagine nothing of less consequence to one who has faith.

“I saw a stanza the other day that tells it well: 

  “’We know not whence is life, nor whither death,
  Know not the Power that circumscribes our breath. 
  But yet we do not fear; what made us men,
  What gave us love, shall we not trust again?’”

While quoting the lines his eyes had been straight ahead, absently dwelling upon the space between the slightly parted doors that gave into the next room.  But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted.  His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to the face it had caught there—­a face new, strange, mesmeric, that all at once enchained him soul and body.  With a splendid, reckless might it assailed him—­left him dazed, deaf, speechless.