“Can't you realise, that what I said in London is true?”
“No. I can't. It's unbelievable. You can't believe it yourself. If you did, how could you go on behaving like anybody else—like me for instance?”
“What would you do if you were condemned to die?”
She shuddered. “I should go mad with fear—I——” She broke off and remained for some moments reflective, with knitted brow. Then she lifted her head proudly. “No, I shouldn't. I should face it like you. Only cowards are afraid. It's best to show things that you don't care a hang for them.”
“Keep that sublime je m'en fich'isme up when I'm dead and buried,” said I, “and you'll pull through your life all right. The only thing you must avoid is the pursuit of eumoiriety.”
“What on earth is that?” she asked.
“The last devastating vanity,” said I.
And so it is.
“When you are gone,” she said bravely, “I shall remember how strong and true you were. It will make me strong too.”
I acquiesced silently in her proposition. In this age of flippancy and scepticism, if a human soul proclaims sincerely its faith in the divinity of a rabbit, in God's name don't disturb it. It is something whereto to refer his aspirations, his resolves; it is a court of arbitration, at the lowest, for his spiritual disputes; and the rabbit will be as effective an oracle as any other. For are not all religions but the strivings of the spirit towards crystallisation at some point outside the environment of passions and appetites which is the flesh, so that it can work untrammelled: and are not all gods but the accidental forms, conditioned by circumstance, which this crystallisation takes? All gods in their anthropo-, helio-, thero-, or what-not-morphic forms are false; but, on the other hand, all gods in their spiritual essence are true. So I do not deprecate my prospective unique position in Lola Brandt's hagiology. It was better for her soul that I should occupy it. Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.