"I don’t understand," he persisted, musing, "why you should fall at all. Now, if I were a Catholic I should be a good one."
He disregarded her irony. "I may sometime. To be perfectly frank, what I found most lacking when I looked into the question was some sufficient inducement. Of what use? I asked myself. If by following Christianity and its precepts a man could make himself anything more than he is--prolong his years, or recall his youth. If he could achieve the Titanic, raise himself to the power of a demigod!" Kimberly’s eyes shone wide at the thought, then they closed to a contrasting torpor. "Will religion do this for any one? I think not. But fancy what that would mean; never to grow old, never to fall ill, never to long for without possessing!" A disdainful pride was manifest in every word of his utterance, but he spoke with the easy-mannered good-nature that was his characteristic.
"A man that follows the dreams of religion," he resumed but with lessening assurance, for Alice maintained a silence almost contemptuous and he began to feel it, "is he not subject to the same failures, the same pains, the same misfortunes that we are subject to? Even as the rest of us, he must grow old and fail and die."
"Some men, of course," she suggested with scant patience, "should have a different dispensation from the average mortal."
Kimberly squirmed dissentingly. "I don’t like that phrase, ’the average mortal.’ It has a villainously hackneyed sound, don’t you think? No, for my part I should be willing to let everybody in on the greater, the splendid dispensation."
"You mean, there are men that should die--some that should die early?"
"There are many reasons why it might not work."
He stopped. "That is true--it might not work, if universally applied. It would do better restricted to a few of us. But no matter; since we can’t have it at all, we must do the best we can. And the way to beat the game as it must be played in this world at present," he continued with contained energy, "is to fight for what we want and defend it when won, against all comers. Won’t you wish me success in such an effort, Alice?"
"But wish me the success, won’t you? It’s awfully up-hill work fighting alone. Two together can do so much better. With two the power is raised almost to the infinite. Together we could be gods--or at least make the gods envy us."