ask me."

He turned his eyes to her clear with unshakable confidence: "I
never will."

Pansy was thinking of her mother's poverty.

They sat awhile in silence.

He had pulled some stems of seeding grass and drew them slowly
across his palm, pondering Life. Then he began to talk to her in
the way that made them so much at home with one another.

"Pansy, men used to speak of the secrets of Nature: there is not
the slightest evidence that Nature has a secret. They used to
speak of the mysteries of the Creator. I am not one of those who
claim to be authorities on the traits of the Creator. Some of my
ancestors considered themselves such. But I do say that men are
coming more and more to think of Him as having no mysteries. We
have no evidence, as the old hymn declares, that He loves to move
in a mysterious way. The entire openness of Nature and of the
Creator--these are the new ways of thinking. They will be the only
ways of thinking in the future unless civilization sinks again into
darkness. What we call secrets and mysteries of the universe are
the limitations of our powers and our knowledge. The little that
we actually do know about Nature, how open it is, how unsecretive!
There is nowhere a sign that the Creator wishes to hide from us
even what is Life. If we ever discover what Life is, no doubt we
shall then realize that it contained no mystery."

She loved to listen, feeling that he was drawing her to his way of
thinking for the coming years.

"It was the folly and the crime of all ancient religions that their
priesthoods veiled them; whenever the veil was rent, like the veil
of Isis, it was not God that men found behind it: it was nothing.
The religions of the future will have no veils. As far as they can
set before their worshippers truth at all, it will be truth as open
as the day. The Great Teacher in the New Testament--what an
eternal lesson on light itself: that is the beauty of his Gospel.
And his Apostles--where do you find him saying to them, 'Preach my
word to all men as the secrets of a priesthood and the mysteries of
the Father'?

"It is the tragedy of man alone that he has his secrets. No doubt
the time will come when I shall have mine and when I shall have to
hide things from you, Pansy, as Rowan has his and hides things from
us. Life is full of things that we cannot tell because they would
injure us; and of things that we cannot tell because they would
injure others. But su