by her side. "This is the luckiest chance I've ever
had--finding you here," he said. "You've had all my letters, haven't
you?"

"Yes," she answered, "and I've torn them all up."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want them," she flashed on him: "I've destroyed them
without reading them."

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."

"Y