"And you believe all this that you have said?"
"No," he answered, "there is no faith in disbelief, whatever the poets have said. Before we can solve the problems of existence we must establish the fact that we exist at all. It is a strange riddle, is it not?"
"We shall learn the answer when we die."
"If I thought that," said Savrola, "I should kill myself to-night out of irresistible curiosity."
He paused, and looked up at the stars, which shone so brightly overhead. She followed his gaze. "You like the stars?" she asked.
"I love them," he replied; "they are very beautiful."
"Perhaps your fate is written there."
"I have always admired the audacity of man in thinking that a Supreme Power should placard the skies with the details of his squalid future, and that his marriage, his misfortunes, and his crimes should be written in letters of suns on the background of limitless space. We are consequential atoms."
"You think we are of no importance?"
"Life is very cheap. Nature has no exaggerated idea of its value. I realise my own insignificance, but I am a philosophic microbe, and it rather adds to my amusement than otherwise. Insignificant or not, I like living, it is good to think of the future."