"We have not learnt very much about her from those two letters, have we?" said Père Antoine. "They are ordinary, and leave many questions, which we wanted to ask, unanswered."
"Yes, they do little more than confirm Strangeways' own statements, and yet. . . ."
"They tell us that her true initials were J. M., the same as those of her assumed name, and the same as those of the monogram on the locket; and they tell us of her great loneliness."
"But I can't see how a knowledge of that one fact—her great loneliness—will help us; it does not reconstruct for us the details of her life so that we can imagine her to ourselves, nor does it contribute anything towards your defence."
"Bother my defence. I don't much care if I am hanged; that would at least be a final solution, so far as I am concerned, to this problem of living. What troubles me at present is, how is this woman feeling about my marriage with a half-breed girl? Now these letters help me; they make me certain that whatever I may be compelled to do at any future time by reason of my isolation, she will not be hard upon me, but will understand. This marriage with Peggy, for instance, looks like a betrayal of her. And though she is dead, I should hate to grieve her in the other world."
Granger paused, and then he added fiercely, "And I'm glad of that last letter for another reason, because it states so clearly that she never loved the other man."
"That can make no difference now."
"But it can," said Granger, rising to his feet, and speaking in a strained whisper, with clenched hands, "I tell you it can. If I thought that she had ever really cared for him, I would shoot myself here and now, that I might be beside her to get between him and her. The thought that he was there with her all alone in the vastness, free to do and to say just whatever he pleased, and that I was shut out, would drive me crazy. Do you think that, if I supposed that he had got his arms around her over there, I could ever rest—if I thought that she would allow him? One little pull of a trigger, the report of a revolver, which I probably shouldn't hear and in any case shouldn't care about, and the journey would be accomplished and I could be bending over her. It sounds very tempting. But I'm prepared to live out my life like a man, now that I know that she understands. If she hadn't known what loneliness meant, she might misjudge my motives in taking up with Peggy, and might, out of revenge, instead of waiting for me, herself take up with Strangeways before my arrival there."
Père Antoine watched him gravely for some seconds after he had finished speaking; then he said, "I don't think that Heaven is quite like that; but none of us can be certain, perhaps your views are as correct as those of anyone else. When I was a young man, before I came to Keewatin, I should have been angry with any man who had said to me a thing like that—but we come to hold strange opinions in this land where all things, judged by our former standards of sanity, even God Himself, seem mad. At that time I longed to be dogmatic and definite in all my beliefs on religion, and this life, and the after-world—that was why I became a Jesuit, that I might exchange despair for certainty. Now, priest though I am, like you I see one gigantic interrogation mark written over sky and earth—and because of it I am grateful. I have learnt that the whole attraction of religion for the human mind, and the entire majesty of God depend on His mystery and silence, and the things which He does not care to tell. If all our questions were answered, we might lose our God-sense. If we knew everything, we should cease to be curious and to strive. Of one thing only are we certain, that Jesus lived and died, and that though we live in the uttermost parts of the earth, it is our duty to be like Him."