“Gehenna, then, is thwarted hope?”
“Gehenna is preconceived failure, built up on my revised theory, where-there’s-hope-there’s-life! Diverts me how they try and try, foredoomed by self-doubt. They don’t and won’t know before That Day that they must fail. Absolutely to know would be——”
“Hell?” Dolores’ lips shuddered the word.
“Hell will be despair. There none will try.”
“And—and Heaven?”
With the query the girl-soul’s eyes were lighted by a vague gleam—a suggestion that night is not so much the end of a day past as the beginning of one to come.
“Heaven?” His Majesty scowled down at her. “Heaven, it is supposed, will be progress—assured realization. Tell me, did you ever find anything in realization?”
“No, not yet. But without faith——”
“A synonym for Heaven, that ‘not yet’!”—he said intolerantly. “As for faith—bah! Faith is the fear of fools.”