Alwynne looked at him, half smiling, half bewildered.
"What do you mean? You talk as if it were all over. Shall I never be frightened again? Think of to-day?"
"Of course it's all over," he assured her truculently. "To-day? To-day was the last revolt of your imagination. You've let it run riot too long. Of course it hasn't been easy to call it to heel."
"You think it's all silly imaginings, then?"
"Alwynne," he said. "You've got to listen to this, just this. You say I'm not to talk about your friend, that I don't know her—that I'm unjust. But listen, at least, to this. I won't be unfair. I'll grant you that she was fond of the little girl, and meant no harm, no more than you did. But you say yourself that she was miserable till you relieved her mind by taking all the blame on yourself. Can't you conceive that in so doing you did assume a burden, a very real one? Don't you think that her fears, her terrors, may have haunted you as well as your own? I believe in the powers of thought. I believe that fear—remorse—regret—may materialise into a very ghost at your elbow. Do you remember Macbeth and Banquo? Do you believe that a something really physical sat that night in the king's seat? Do you think it was the man from his grave? I think it was Macbeth's thoughts incarnate. He thought too much, that man. But let's leave all that. Let's argue it out from a common-sense point of view. You said you believed in God?"
"Yes," she said.
"I suppose so."
"Well—I'm not so sure that I do," he remarked meditatively. "But if I do—I must say I cannot see the point of a God who wouldn't be more than a match for him: and a God who'd leave a baby in his clutches to expiate in fire and brimstone and all the rest of the beastliness——Well, is it common sense?" he appealed to her.
"If you put it like that——" she admitted.