“What are they, if you please?”

“Should you know better if I said they were mind and matter?”

“You believe in nothing else?”

“N-N-No!” hesitated Strong.

“Isn’t it horrible, your doctrine?”

“What of that, if it’s true?  I never said it was pleasant.”

“Do you expect to convert any one to such a religion?”

“Great Buddha, no!  I don’t want to convert any one.  I prefer almost any kind of religion.  No one ever took up this doctrine who could help himself.”

Esther pondered deeply for a time.  Strong’s trick of driving her to do what he wanted was so old a habit that she had learned to distrust it.  At last she began again from another side.

“You really mean that this life is every thing, and the future nothing?”

“I never said so.  I rather think the church is right in thinking this life nothing and the future every thing.”

“But you deny a future life!”

Strong began to feel uncomfortable.  He wanted to defend his opinions, and it became irksome to go on making out the strongest case he could against himself.

“Come!” said he:  “don’t go beyond what I said.  I only denied the rewards and punishments.  Mind!  I’ll not say there is a future life, but I don’t deny it’s possibility.”

“You are willing to give us a chance?” said Esther rather sarcastically.

“I don’t know that you would call it one,” replied Strong satisfied by Esther’s irony that he had now gone far enough.  “If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned.  My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.”

“My trouble is that I don’t think I understand in the least what you mean,” replied Esther.

“I thought you knew enough theology for that,” said George.  “The thing is simple enough.  Hazard and I and every one else agree that thought is eternal.  If you can get hold of one true thought, you are immortal as far as that thought goes.  The only difficulty is that every fellow thinks his thought the true one.  Hazard wants you to believe in his, and I don’t want you to believe in mine, because I’ve not got one which I believe in myself.”

“Still I don’t understand,” said Esther.  “How can I make myself immortal by taking Mr. Hazard’s opinions?”

“Because then the truth is a part of you! if I understand St. Paul, this is sound church doctrine, leaving out the personal part of the Trinity which Hazard insists on tacking to it.  Except for the rubbish, I don’t think I am so very far away from him,” continued Strong, now assuming that he had done what he could to set Esther straight, and going on with the conversation as though it had no longer a personal interest.  As he talked, he poked holes in the snow with his stick, as though what he said was for his own satisfaction, and he were turning this old problem over again in his mind to