“I believe,” said he in Chinese, “in your profession of a son’s affection, and therefore I admit you to the position. After a year or so our lives will materially be separated, but spiritually they will run the same course.”
“This is the happiest and most fortunate day of my life,” said Quong Ho.
“Without going into superlatives,” replied Baltazar in English, “I may reciprocate the sentiment.”
They talked on, developing the idea of wedding of the material and the spiritual, branching off into fascinating side-tracks, as men of alert intelligence delight to do in conversation, and coming back now and then with the flash of unexpectedness to the main issue. They touched on the hermits of Thebaïd.
“Their outlook,” said Baltazar, “was exclusively spiritual, fundamentally selfish. They were out to save their own silly, unimportant souls from hell-fire, and nothing else mattered. Egotism raised to infinity. Our retirement has nothing at all in common with theirs.”
“Sir,” said Quong Ho, “since we are speaking very seriously, may I, without indiscretion, ask you whether you too are not out to save your soul?”
Baltazar rose from his chair and strode up and down the long room, casting at Quong Ho a swift glance from beneath frowning brows every time he passed him. At last he halted and said:
“That’s so. The history of my inner life has been an attempt to save my soul. But there’s a hell of a lot of difference between me and St. Simeon Stylites. That was a kind of ass who sat for years on the top of a pillar and never did a hand’s turn for anybody. All he thought of was his escape from hell. Now I, as far as my soul is concerned, don’t care a damn whether it’s going to hell or heaven. My object in saving it is to be of use to my fellow-creatures.”
Quong Ho, who had risen when his master rose, said:
“All that is clear to me. I too am here for the same purpose.”