"I do."
"I'll say no hard thing against your books no more then. Somehow—after what fell out—I wanted to be the same as you. I was torn in half between Dan and you; and sometimes I thought heaven would be good, and oftener I couldn't see how. Then I felt as if the sleep without end and without dreams that you trusted to was best. But if you and Daniel both think for sure that there's a time coming will find us alive for ever, and no growing old in it—then I'll believe it too—I must."
"Believe it," he said. "'Tis worth anything. We call death endless sleep and all the rest of it, to make it sound less terrible; but that is only playing with words. Death is dust if it is the end. I prayed to God—the God I didn't believe in—to make me believe. Such vain things will a sad heart do. Not vain either, for He heard and answered. The sea it was that fetched the answer. Miles and miles I tramped along lonely shores and watched the waves. They brought the idea of endlessness so near to me. My watch in my pocket ticked time; but the great, sad-coloured waves beat out eternity. I want to walk on that beach with you and see the water-scythes sweep round and mow the sand. And when the sand sighs I feel it is the sigh of the weary earth, that knows no rest from the unwearying sea. The sea's a better lover than I was. Twice a day he worships the shore."
"I might come maybe when autumn's back. A change would do the child good belike."
"Well thought. What more natural? Somehow I want you there—just to walk over the sand and hear the long sob and hopeless sigh of sea against stone. It will force you to believe in your soul, Sarah Jane."
"Do it make you glad—this new feeling?"
"Yes, it does. It opens out so many doors to hope. It teaches so much. I told you once that if there was another world, there was a God. It is so."
"Do it make right and wrong plainer?"
"In time—in time it will. I've flung over a lot of old opinions already. 'Tis like parting with the very stuff of your brain; for my thoughts were my life—till you came into it. But you—you've taught me such a lot too. You taught me that truth was beyond our reach—that was a great piece of learning. Once hold that and comfort grows out of it—a sort of desolate comfort to a hungry heart—still comfort. Truth's got to be softened behind a veil for things with no more intellect than we have. The stark, naked light would blind us for ever and make us mad. God knows that. Truth is God's face, Sarah Jane."
She was secretly amazed at this great mental change in him. For his sake she was glad, because he had evidently welcomed the possibility of a new belief that was strong to throw hope over the present desert of his mind. With weakened physical circumstances, reason had also weakened; but Woodrow believed otherwise and told himself that unimpaired intellectual powers, working unceasingly on the problem he conceived to be paramount, had at last purged his understanding and lifted him into a purer belief. He was, moreover, proud that he had attained to this triumph by the exercise of what he believed to be pure reason. He doubted not that such faith as he had now attained was the only faith worthy of mankind.