“Because as Bastin would tell you, it is a gift, though one that is never granted to the proud and self-sufficient. Become humble as a child, Oro, and perchance you too may acquire faith.”
“And how shall I become humble?”
“By putting away all dreams of power and its exercise, if such you have, and in repentance walking quietly to the Gates of Death,” I replied.
“For you, Humphrey, who have little or none of these things, that may be easy. But for me who have much, if not all, it is otherwise. You ask me to abandon the certain for the uncertain, the known for the unknown, and from a half-god communing with the stars, to become an earthworm crawling in mud and lifting blind eyes towards the darkness of everlasting night.”
“A god who must die is no god, half or whole, Oro; the earthworm that lives on is greater than he.”
“Mayhap. Yet while I endure I will be as a god, so that when night comes, if come it must, I shall have played my part and left my mark upon this little world of ours. Have done!” he added with a burst of impatience. “What will you of my daughter?”
“What man has always willed of woman—herself, body and soul.”
“Her soul perchance is yours, if she has one, but her body is mine to give or withhold. Yet it can be bought at a price,” he added slowly.
“So she told me, Oro.”
“I can guess what she told you. Did I not watch you yonder by the lake when you gave her a ring graved with the signs of Life and Everlastingness? The question is, will you pay the price?”