He narrowed his eyes a little as he looked at Michael, making another of his eloquent pauses. Michael didn’t like it, but he couldn’t help asking:
“Well, what is your suggestion?”
“Are you willing,” asked the antiquity man, slowly, “to change your religion?”
“Change my religion?” echoed Michael, uncomprehendingly. “I’m afraid I haven’t much religion to change.”
“All the better,” returned the antiquity man. “So it is with most people of intelligence. If, however, you were willing to change your religion, if you were also willing to change your language, your name, your home, your wife even, for others as different from them as can be conceived, if you could bring yourself to make that sacrifice and to become one of us, it would not be necessary for you to drink that cup of coffee.”
Michael saw it. He caught his breath. But—
“I must ask you to decide quickly,” continued the antiquity man. “We all have affairs. And if it should become necessary for us to answer those questions of which you spoke, it would be better for witnesses to be able to say that we were not in here too long this afternoon.”
Michael saw that, too. And all the blood in him quickened at the chance of life. Life! His life had not been such a success. Why not wipe the slate clean and start over again? It ironically came to him that Aurora would call that romance—to be cornered here like a rat in a trap while four men he didn’t know stared at him with a candle! But why, on the other hand, should he give in to them? That was cowardice, even if it was irony, too—to die for what he didn’t want and didn’t believe in.... The immensity of the dilemma was too much for him. Irresistible force, immovable obstacle—that flashed inconsequently into his head. Was the light going out? The room grew darker. He tried again to clear his throat. It suddenly came to him that he didn’t even know who these people were, and what they wanted him to become....
The antiquity man reached forward, lifted the coffee-cup out of its silver holder, and dropped it on the stone floor. Michael stared down stupidly at the bits of broken porcelain. They were like the bits of broken tiles. He wondered if his trousers were spattered....
The young man took his hand out of his pocket and opened the door.