“Wouldn’t you? I lived on unpaid bills. I drank. I drugged. There was nothing I didn’t do. What do you suppose I got in on? You’ll never guess.”
“No. No. I give it up.”
“My love of beauty. You wouldn’t think it, but it seems that actually counts here, in the eternal world.”
“And Elizabeth, what did she get in on?”
“Her love of me.”
“Then all I can say is,” said Mr. Spalding, “Heaven must be a most immoral place.”
“Oh, no. Your parochial morality doesn’t hold good here, that’s all. Why should it? It’s entirely relative. Relative to a social system with limits in time and space. Relative to a certain biological configuration that ceased with our terrestrial organisms. Not absolute. Not eternal.
“But beauty—Beauty is eternal, is absolute. And I—I loved beauty more than credit, more than drink or drugs or women, more even than Elizabeth.
“And love is eternal. And Elizabeth loved me more than you, more than respectability, more than peace and comfort, and a happy life.”
“That’s all very well, Jeffreson; and Elizabeth may be all right. Mary Magdalene, you know, Quia multum amavit, and so forth. But if a blackguard like you can slip into heaven as easily as all that, where are our ethics?”