“I daresay she does. She probably regards the cinematograph as a sin against art. What you propose would be an actual blasphemy.”
“Oh,” said Tim, “that’s exactly what she said. Blasphemy! Do you really think so too? I wouldn’t go on with my experiments if I thought that. But I don’t believe you can be right. I—I went round to see Father Bourke. That was after Mrs. Ascher said it was blasphemy and I really wanted to know. Father Bourke is one of the priests at St. Gabriel’s. I consulted him.”
“Well,” I said, “what did he tell you?”
“He said it was all right and that I needn’t bother about what Protestants said was blasphemy. They don’t know. At least Father Bourke seemed to think they couldn’t know.”
“You go by what Father Bourke says and you’ll be safe.”
I should particularly like to hear Father Bourke and Mrs. Ascher arguing out the subject of blasphemy together. They might go on for years and years before either of them began to understand what the other meant by the word. But it would be little less than a crime to involve the simple soul of Tim Gorman in the maze of two separate kinds of casuistry.
“In any case,” I said, “I don’t take Mrs. Ascher’s view of the matter. I don’t agree with her.”
“I don’t see,” said Tim, “how cinematographs can be blasphemies so long as there aren’t any pictures of religious things. I’m sure it must be all right and I can go on with what I want to do. If I can succeed in making the figures stand out from one another, as if they were really there——”
“You’ll add a new terror to life,” I said. “But that needn’t stop you doing it if you can.”
“I think I can,” he said eagerly. “You see it’s the next thing to be done. The cinematograph is perfect up to that point It must make a new start if it’s to go any further. I should like to be the man who makes the next step possible. What’s wanted now is—is——”