Griggs laughed quietly and crossed one leg over the other, as he looked at Katharine.
“You’re not a comforting person when one feels religious,” she said.
“No—by Jove!” exclaimed Bright. “You wouldn’t have converted the cowboys in the Nacimiento Valley, Griggs. They’d have tried their own idea of a hereafter on you—quick. That’s the trouble with all that metaphysical stuff, or whatever you call it—it doesn’t say anything to mankind—it only talks to professorkind. Unless a fellow’s passed a sort of higher standard in terminations, he hasn’t the ghost of a chance of spiritual comfort. He couldn’t understand the first word of what you talk about.”
“Did I use long words?” asked Griggs, blandly. “I thought I didn’t.”
“Well, not exactly long words. I don’t mean literally terminations. But you talk another language, somehow. I know I’m what they call an educated man, because I once learned some Latin and Greek at a sinful expense of time. But I can’t half follow you, even when you use good plain English. The policeman at the corner would march you off and clap you in the jug like a shot if you talked to him that way for five minutes. That is, unless you tied him up in a hard knot with those hands of yours, and set him down by the railings to cool. I wouldn’t try it, though. I suppose there’s a limit to the number of policemen you could strangle with each finger. No—joking apart—that sort of thing isn’t going to take the place of Christianity, you know—even as people like us look at what we call Christianity. You’ve got to have something to pray for and somebody to pray to, you know, after all.”
“Well,” answered Griggs, “there’s God to pray to and salvation to pray for.”
“Not in your system—without any future,” retorted Bright.
“Oh, yes, there is,” replied the other. “You seem to think I’m an atheist, or a freethinker, at least—though I can’t see why, I’m sure.”
“Why—because—” Bright stopped, trying to formulate his accusation.
Katharine laughed a little, and Wingfield looked from one to the other with a puzzled expression, as though he should have liked to understand better. Griggs proceeded to defend himself.