He spoke with coolness, but it was by a powerful effort: he had waked from a frightful dream, drenched from head to foot. Coward? No. He had reason to fear.
"Whereas," rejoined Mary, taking up his clew, "everybody will be the better if you keep out of it—everybody," she repeated, "—God, and Jesus Christ, and all their people."
"How do you make that out?" he asked. "God has more to do than look after such as me."
"You think he has so many worlds to look to—thousands of them only making? But why does he care about his worlds? Is it not because they are the schools of his souls? And why should he care for the souls? Is it not because he is making them children—his own children to understand him and be happy with his happiness?"
"I can't say I care for his happiness. I want my own. And yet I don't know any that's worth the worry of it. No; I would rather be put out like a candle."
"That's because you have been a disobedient child, taking your own way, and turning God's good things to evil. You don't know what a splendid thing life is. You actually and truly don't know, never experienced in your being the very thing you were made for."
"My father had no business to leave me so much money."
"You had no business to misuse it."
"I didn't quite know what I was doing."
"You do now."