As Aunt Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a willow rocker on the piazza near-by, the young man suppressed a comment that arose within him.

“Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing” the girl continued, in a lower tone.  “You know Aunt Bell’s husband, Uncle Chester—­the meekest, dearest little man in the world, he was—­well, once he disappeared and wasn’t heard of again for over four years—­except that they knew his bank account was drawn on from time to time.  Then, at last, his brother found him, living quietly under an assumed name in a little town outside of Boston—­pretending that he hadn’t a relative in the world.  He told his brother he was just beginning to feel rested.  Aunt Bell said he was demented.  While he was away she’d been all through psychometry, the planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and Unitarianism.  What are you, Bernal?”

“Nothing, Nance—­that’s the trouble.”

“But where are you going, and what for?”

“I don’t know either answer—­but I can’t stay here, because I’m blasphemous—­it seems—­and I don’t want to stay, even if I weren’t sent.  I want to be out—­away.  I feel as if I must be looking for something I haven’t found.  I suspect it’s a fourth dimension to religion.  They have three—­even breadth—­but they haven’t found faith yet—­a faith that doesn’t demand arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and bloody, weird tales in a book that becomes their idol.”

The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a little in the hammock, a bare elbow in one hand, her meditative chin in the other, the curtains of her eyes half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before her wonder.  Then, at last: 

“Why, you’re another Adam—­being sent out of the garden for your sin.  Now tell me—­honest—­was the sin worth it?  I’ve often wondered.”  She gave an eager little laugh.

“Why, Nance, it’s worth so much that you want to go of your own accord.  Do you suppose Adam could have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after he became alive—­with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, no chance to do wrong?  As for earning his bread—­the only plausible hell I’ve ever been able to picture is one where there was nothing to do—­no work, no puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking.  Now, isn’t that an ideal hell?  And is it my fault if it happens to be a description of what Christians look forward to as heaven?  I tell you, Adam would have gone out of that garden from sheer boredom after a few days.  The setting of the angel with the flaming sword to guard the gate shows that God still failed to understand the wonderful creature he had made.”

She smiled, meditative, wondering.

“I dare say, for my part, I’d have eaten that apple if the serpent had been at all persuasive.  Bernal, I wonder—­and wonder—­and wonder—­I’m never done.  And Aunt Bell says I’ll never be a sweet and wholesome and stimulating companion to my husband, if I don’t stop being so vague and fantastic.”