He flushed angrily.  Apart from the personal affront, the fact that the literary products of a poet, precious and, in this case, sincere, should have been destroyed, unread, was an anti-social outrage.

“If it didn’t please a woman to believe in God,” he said, “and God came in Person and stood in front of her, she would run out of the room and call upon somebody to come and shoot Him for a burglar, just to prove she was right.”

Phyllis was shocked.  Her feminine mind pounced on the gross literalness of his rhetorical figure.

“I’ve never heard anything more blasphemous and horrible,” she exclaimed, moving to her end of the bench.  “Putting yourself in the position of the Almighty!  Oh!” she flung out her hand.  “Don’t speak to me.”

In spite of the atheistical Gedge, Phyllis believed in God and Jesus Christ and the Ten Commandments.  She also believed in a host of other simple things, such as Goodness and Truth, Virtue and Patriotism.  The arguments and theories and glosses that her father and Randall wove about them appeared to her candid mind as meaningless arabesques.  She could not see how all the complications concerning the elementary canons of faith and conduct could arise.  She appreciated Randall’s intellectual gifts; his power of weaving magical words into rhyme fascinated her; she was childlike in her wonder at his command of the printed page; when he revealed to her the beauty of things, as the rogue had a pretty knack of doing, her nature thrilled responsive.  He gave her a thousand glimpses into a new world, and she loved him for it.  But when he talked lightly of sacred matters, such as God and Duty, he ran daggers into her heart.  She almost hated him.

He had to expend much eloquence and persuasion to induce her to listen to him.  He had no wish to break any of the Commandments, especially the Third.  He professed penitence.  But didn’t she see that her treatment of him was driving him into a desperate unbelief in God and man?  When a woman accepted a man’s love she accepted many responsibilities.

Phyllis stonily denied acceptance.

“I’ve refused it.  You’ve asked me to marry you and I told you I wouldn’t.  And I won’t.”

“You’re mixing up two things,” he said, with a smile.  “Love and marriage.  Many people love and don’t marry, just as many marry and don’t love.  Now once you did tell me that you loved me, and so you accepted my love.  There’s no getting out of it.  I’ve given you everything I’ve got, and you can’t throw it away.  The question is —­what are you going to do with it?  What are you going to do with me?”

His sophistries frightened her; but she cut through them.

“Isn’t it rather a question of what you’re going to do with yourself?”

“If you give me up I don’t care a hang what becomes of me.”  He came very near and his voice was dangerously soft.  “Phyllis dear, I do love you with all my heart.  Why won’t you marry me?”