"Charles Stevens, do you seek death?"
"None should wed where the heart is not. That bold, unscrupulous woman has already won my contempt."
"Have a care!"
"Go tell her that Charles Stevens prefers death on the gibbet to becoming her husband."
Mr. Parris gazed on the helpless prisoner for several minutes, his thin lips curled with a sneering smile.
"Charles Stevens," he said in low measured tones, "you are a fool. Do you know what it is to die? Have you counted the cost of a leap in the dark?"
"No sane man courts death; yet to the Christian, who hath kept God's commands, the monster is robbed of half his terrors. God has wisely constituted us so that we dread death. If we did not, we would not be willing to endure the misfortunes, disappointments and ills which afflict us from the cradle to the grave; but the Christian can say welcome to death in preference to dishonor. I thank my God, Samuel Parris, that I can, with the prophets of old, say, O, grave, where is thy victory?"
"Charles Stevens, have you ever thought that, after all, this, too, may be a delusion? That the Bible may be only the uninspired work of man, and that there may be no beyond—no God, save in nature?"
"So you have turned atheist?" cried Charles. "Perhaps you have been one all along?"