s of other people's cheap wisdom and
philosophy, poured through the kind distortion of his own intelligence.

He gave a toss of his head. "Ah, that is my hobby--I reconcile, I unite,
I adapt! It is all the nature of the mind, the far-look, the all-round
sight of the man. I have it all. I see."

He gazed eloquently into the sunset, he swept the horizon with his hand.
"I have the all-round look. I say the Man of Calvary, He is before all,
the sun; but I say Socrates, Plato, Jean Jacques--that is my name, and
it is not for nothing, that--Jean Jacques Rousseau, Descartes, Locke,
they are stars that go round the sun. It is the same light, but not the
same sound. I reconcile. In me all comes together like the spokes to
the hub of a wheel. Me--I am a Christian, I am philosophe, also. In St.
Saviour's, my home in Quebec, if the crops are good, what do men say?
'C'est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,' that is what they say. If the
crops are bad, what do they say? 'It is the good God'--that is what they
say. It is the good God that makes crops good or bad, and it is the
good God that makes men say, 'C'est le bon Dieu.' The good God makes the
philosophy. It is all one."

She appeared to grow agitated, and her voice shook as she spoke. "Tsh,
it is only a fool that says the good God does it, when the thing that is
done breaks you or that which you love all to pieces. No, no, no, it is
not religion, it is not philosophy that makes one raise the head when
the heart is bowed down, when everything is snatched away that was all
in all. That the good God does it is a lie. Santa Maria, what a lie!"

"Why 'Santa Maria,' then, if it is a lie?" he asked triumphantly. He did
not observe how her breast was heaving, how her hands were clenched; for
she was really busy with thoughts of her dead Carvillho Gonzales; but
for the moment he could only see the point of an argument.

She made a gesture of despair. "So--that's it. Habit in us is so strong.
It comes through the veins of our mothers to us. We say that God is
a lie one minute, and then the next minute we say, 'God guard you!'
Always--always calling to something, for something outside ourselves.
That is why I said Santa Maria, why I ask her to pray for the soul of
my friend, to pray to the God that breaks me and mine, and sends us over
the seas, beggars without a home."

Now she had him back out of the vanities of his philosophy. He was up,
inflamed, looking at her with an excitement on