"I did not mean your wife. I mean Jesus Christ."
"Oh, I dare say! Well, perhaps; if I knew him as you do, and if I were quite sure he wanted it done for him."
"He does want it done for him—always and every day—not for his own sake, though it does make him very glad. To give up your way for his is to die for him; and, when any one will do that, then he is able to do everything for him; for then, and not till then, he gets such a hold of him that he can lift him up, and set him down beside himself. That's how my father used to teach me, and now I see it for myself to be true."
"It's all very grand, no doubt; but it ain't nowhere, you know. It's all in your own head, and nowhere else. You don't, you can't positively believe all that!"
"So much, at least, that I live in the strength and hope it gives me, and order my ways according to it."
"Why didn't you teach my wife so?"
"I tried, but she didn't care to think. I could not get any further with her. She has had no trouble yet to make her listen."
"By Jove! I should have thought marrying a fellow like me might have been trouble enough to make a saint of her."
It was impossible to fix him to any line of thought, and Mary did not attempt it. To move the child in him was more than all argument.
A pause followed. "I don't love God," he said.