Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a willow rocker on the
piazza near-by, the young man suppressed a comment that arose within him.

"Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing" the girl continued, in a lower
tone. "You know Aunt Bell's husband, Uncle Chester--the meekest, dearest
little man in the world, he was--well, once he disappeared and wasn't
heard of again for over four years--except that they knew his bank account
was drawn on from time to time. Then, at last, his brother found him,
living quietly under an assumed name in a little town outside of
Boston--pretending that he hadn't a relative in the world. He told his
brother he was just beginning to feel rested. Aunt Bell said he was
demented. While he was away she'd been all through psychometry, the
planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and Unitarianism. What are
you, Bernal?"

"Nothing, Nance--that's the trouble."

"But where are you going, and what for?"

"I don't know either answer--but I can't stay here, because I'm
blasphemous--it seems--and I don't want to stay, even if I weren't sent.
I want to be out--away. I feel as if I must be looking for something I
haven't found. I suspect it's a fourth dimension to religion. They have
three--even breadth--but they haven't found faith yet--a faith that
doesn't demand arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and bloody, weird tales in
a book that becomes their idol."

The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a little in the hammock, a
bare elbow in one hand, her meditative chin in the other, the curtains of
her eyes half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before her
wonder. Then, at last:

"Why, you're another Adam--being sent out of the garden for your sin. Now
tell me--honest--was the sin worth it? I've often wondered." She gave an
eager little laugh.

"Why, Nance, it's worth so much that you want to go of your own accord. Do
you suppose Adam could have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after
he became alive--with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, no chance to do
wrong? As for earning his bread--the only plausible hell I've ever been
able to picture is one where there was nothing to do--no work, no
puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking. Now, isn't that an
ideal hell? And is it my fault if it happens to be a description of what
Christians look forward to as heaven? I tell you, Adam would have gone out
of that garden from sheer boredom after a few days. The sett