e shall have
no--no dealings--with--with the unrighteous."

"Am I unrighteous?" he asked bitterly. "How am I unrighteous?"

"You are an unbeliever. You--you told me so yourself. You don't believe
in heaven or--or--hell--or--or--"

"In heaven or hell, don't I? You know, Susy--good Lord!--Susy, you know
you can make this world one or the other for me.

"Don't--don't," she implored. "I mean you don't think enough about your
eternal salvation."

"Child, how can I? This world is hard enough to get on in, God knows,
how can I worry about the next? Who knows? There mayn't be a next."

"There is, there is!" she cried, eagerly. "Oh! if you would only repent
while there is yet time--if you would only repent and be saved!"

"Oh, child, child, is there anything in the world I would not do for
your sweet face?"

"Not for me--oh, not for me! Because--because--"

He put up his hand to stop her. The religious phrases that she had been
accustomed to from her youth up, and that came naturally to her tongue,
hurt him somehow as the foul-mouthed conversation of the fo'c'sle had
never hurt him. From her lips he would not, if he could help himself,
hear the phrases he had been accustomed to laugh at as canting and
hypocritical.

"Don't dear, don't. I know what you are going to say. It is no good. We
are so different altogether. I can't believe--as you believe--I cannot.
I 'll do my best to be a good man--I 'll never lie to you or--"

"It is no use," she moaned, "no use at all. We cannot prevail by our own
strength."

He laughed bitterly.

"Belief is not a matter of will," he said, "or I would believe just
to please you--just because I want you more than anything in the wide
world. All I can do is to be honest, and tell you I can't believe. It
need never make any difference to you, dear, never, never."

The girl laid her face down on the hard rock again.

"And if--and if--next time your ship goes past here you were to fall
from the mast, and be drowned, you think--you think you would just go
out like a fire--that--that would be all."

He kicked a stone till it fell over the edge of the cliff, and they
could hear it going by leaps and bounds into the sea a hundred feet
below.

"And you think," he said, "I shall be eternally damned, tormented in
fire and brimstone for ever and ever. Upon my word, Susy, mine is the
kinder fate."

"I can't bear to think of it, I can't bear to think of it!" she cried.
"Oh! Ben, Ben! I can't