"So like you—and you get a deal of comfort from it, no doubt. But what kind of a God, Christopher?"
"A just God—a loving God."
"How any doctor can say that truthfully! The pain, the crime you must have seen——"
"Exactly. I've known, I suppose, of as much misery, as much agony, much wickedness as most men in a lifetime. I've never had a case under my notice that hasn't shown the necessity for pain, the necessity for struggle, for defeat, for disaster. If this life were all, still I should have had proof enough that a loving God was moving in the world."
She lay back, smiling at him.
"You're a sentimentalist of course. I've heard you talk before. You're wrong, Christopher, badly wrong. I shall prove it before you will."
"Well," he said, smiling back at her, "we'll see."
"Oh, yes, you're a sentimentalist of the very worst—I don't know that I like you the less for it. I'm an old pagan and it's served me all my life. Ah! there's the thunder!"
She sat up in bed, her cap pushed back, her skinny arms stretched out in a kind of ecstasy. "There! That's it! That's the kind of thing I like! There's your God for you, Christopher."
A flash of lightning flung the room into unreality.