And God said: “Dost thou deny Me?”
“Aye,” answered the man, “by the existence of the Beast, I deny Thee. By my own courage, I deny Thee. By the power which is mine, I deny Thee. By every tortured body in this world, and by my own tortured body, I deny Thee.”
“Yet thou hearest me,” said God.
Now, it was Francis Gordon who spoke. His twisted body rose from its seat by the desk; his eyes looked unafraid into the heart of the darkling sunset. “There is no god. God’s purpose is a fraud and a lie. This voice which I hear is the lying voice of my own mind.”
Very faintly came the answer out of the sunset: “I am in thy mind as I am in thy body. Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.”
Then it seemed to Francis as though some veil had been drawn back from across the world; as though, for the first time, he saw God’s Purpose plain. Never while earth endured would the Beast utterly perish: for God had created the Beast even as He created man to subdue the Beast. Without this menace of the Beast, man’s finest attribute—the very manhood of him—would atrophy. He would become flabby, emasculate: and in his flabbiness, he would perish.
And looking into his own mind as the Voice bade him, Francis Gordon saw for the first time the true meaning of this dream he had christened, for want of better name, “Anglo-Saxondom.” Anglo-Saxondom was Man’s bulwark against the Beast: the spirit and essence of Liberty: a federation not of leagues and treaties, of obligations and entangling alliances, not even of common blood—but a Federation of Sentiment: a tie of mutual thought and mutual speech and mutual Ideals. So long as this Federation, the Federation of the English-speaking races, held together, the world could be safe from the Beast: for this Federation was selfless, it sought no domination save the domination of Good over Evil: it was of the Spirit, not of the Flesh; friend of every decent human being, foe to every Beast; God’s gift for suffering Humanity. . . .
A coal, dropping in the grate, aroused him from his dreaming. It had grown almost dark. Trees and turf and hills beyond were all veiled in misty shadows—things of the twilight, ghosts of a world. And with the glory of the sunset, the glory of his visioning departed.
Doubt tore him as with pincers. Once again, this Voice he called God had lied to him. The English-speaking races were not united, could never be united. He had imagined a vain thing. . . .