than good; and what barrier has He ever interposed between woman
and man, her natural destroyer? None!--save the trifling one of
virtue, which is a flimsy thing, and often breaks down at the
first temptation. No, my dear Princess; the 'Eternal God,' if
there is one, does nothing but look on impassively at the
universal havoc of creation. And in the blindness and silence of
things, I cannot recognize an Eternal God at all; we were
evidently made to eat, drink, breed and die--and there an end."

"What of ambition?" asked Dr. Dean. "What of the inspiration that
lifts a man beyond himself and his material needs, and teaches him
to strive after the Highest?"

"Mere mad folly!" replied Gervase impetuously. "Take the Arts. I,
for example, dream of painting a picture that shall move the world
to admiration,--but I seldom grasp the idea I have imagined. I
paint something,--anything,--and the world gapes at it, and some
rich fool buys it, leaving me free to paint another something; and
so on and so on, to the end of my career. I ask you what
satisfaction does it bring? What is it to Raphael that thousands
of human units, cultured and silly, have stared at his 'Madonnas'
and his famous Cartoons?"

"Well, we do not exactly know what it may or may not be to
Raphael," said the Doctor, meditatively. "According to my
theories, Raphael is not dead, but merely removed into another
form, on another planet possibly, and is working elsewhere. You
might as well ask what it is to Araxes now that he was a famous
warrior once?"