"I doubt the need for my message, Nance. I need for myself a God that could no more spare a Hottentot than a Pope--but I doubt if the world does. No one would listen to me--I'm only a dreamer. Once, when I was small they gave me a candy cane for Christmas. It was a thing I had long worshipped in shop-windows--actually worshipped as the primitive man worshipped his idol. I can remember how sad I was when no one else worshipped with me, or paid the least attention to my treasure. I suspect I shall meet the same indifference now. And I hope I'll have the same philosophy. I remember I brought myself to eat the cane, which I suppose is the primary intention regarding them--and perhaps the fruits of one's faith should be eaten quite as practically."
They had sent no word to Allan, agreeing it were better fun to surprise him. When they took the train together on the third day, the wife not less than the brother looked forward to a joyous reunion with him. And now that Nancy had proved in her heart the perverse unwifeliness of her old attitude and was eager to begin the symbolic rites of her atonement, it came to her to wonder how Bernal would have judged her had she persisted in that first wild impulse of rebellion. She wanted to see from what degree of his reprobation she had saved herself. She would be circuitous in her approach.
"You remember, Bernal, that night you went away--how you said there was no moral law under the sky for you but your own?"
He smiled, and above the noise of the train his voice came to her as his voice of old came above the noise of the years.
"Yes--Nance--that was right. No moral law but mine. I carried out my threat to make them all find their authority in me."
"Then you still believe yours is the only authority?"
"Yes; it sounds licentious and horrible, doesn't it; but there are two queer things about it--the first is that man quite naturally _wishes_ to be decent, and the second is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon the authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian than ever the decalogue was. One needs only ordinary good taste to keep the ten commandments--the moral ones. A man may observe them all and still be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own law, and yet that's all anybody has to keep him right, if we only knew it, Nance--barring a few human statutes against things like murder and keeping one's barber-shop open on the Sabbath--the ruder offenses which no gentleman ever wishes to commit.