"It's all nonsense," said Isobel. "If only you'll study the rocks and biology, and Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' and lots of other things, you will see how man came to develop on this planet. He is just an accident of Nature, that's all."
"And why shouldn't there be an accident of Nature on Mars and elsewhere?" queried Godfrey.
"Perhaps, but if so, it is quite another accident and has nothing to do with us."
"I don't know," he answered. "Sometimes," here his voice became dreamy as it had a way of doing, "I think that we pass on, all of us, from star to star. At least I know I often feel as if I had done so."
"You mean from planet to planet, Godfrey; stars are hot places, you know. You should not swallow all that theosophical bosh which is based on nothing."
"There's the Bible," went on Godfrey, "which tells us the same thing, that we live eternally----"
"Then we must always have lived, since eternity is a circle."
"Why not, Isobel? That is what I was trying to say. Well, if we live eternally, we must live somewhere, perhaps in those planets, or others, which it would be a waste to keep empty."
"I daresay--though Nature does not mind waste, or what seems to be waste. But why should you think of living eternally at all? Many people live a great deal too long as it is, and it is horrible to believe that they go on for ever."
"You see they might grow to something splendid in the end, Isobel. You must not judge them by what they are now."
"Oh! I know, the caterpillar and the butterfly, and all the rest of it."
"The Bible"--continued Godfrey imperturbably--when she cut him short.
"Well, what of the Bible? How do you know that it is true?"
"Because I do know it, though the truth in it may be different for everyone. What is more, I know that one day you will agree with me."
She looked at him curiously in the flashing way that was peculiar to her, for something in his tone and manner impressed her.
"Perhaps. I hope so, Godfrey, but at present I often feel as though I believed in nothing, except that I am I and you are you, and my father is--there he's calling me. Goodbye," and she was gone.
This particular conversation, one of many, had, as it happened, important results on the lives of these two young creatures. Isobel, in whom the love of Truth, however ugly it might be and however destructive of hope, faith, charity and all the virtues, was a burning, inbred passion, took to the secret study of theology in order to find out why Godfrey was so convinced as to the teachings of the Bible. She was not old or mellowed enough to understand that the real reason must be discovered, not in the letter but in the spirit, that is in the esoteric meaning of the sayings as to receiving the Kingdom of Heaven like a child and the necessity of being born again. Therefore with a fierce intensity, thrusting aside the spirit and its promptings which perhaps are shadows of the only real truths, she wrestled with the letter. She read the Divines, also much of the Higher Criticism, the lives of Saints, the Sacred Books themselves and many other things, only to arise bewildered, and to a great extent unbelieving.