"Did you find him, Bernal?"

"Oh, yes!"

"In this strange man?"

"In myself. It's the same old secret, Nance, that people have been
discovering for ages--but it is a secret only until after you learn it
for yourself. The only true revelation from God is here in man--in the
human heart. I had to be years alone to find it out, Nance--I'd had so
much of that Bible mythology stuffed into me--but I mustn't bore you
with it."

"Oh, but I must know, Bernal--you don't dream how greatly I need at this
moment to believe _something_--more than you ever did!"

"It's simple, Nance. It's the only revelation in which the God of
yesterday gives willing place to the better God of to-day--only here
does the God of to-day say, 'Thou shalt have no other God before me but
the God of to-morrow who will be more Godlike than I. Only in this way
can we keep our God growing always a little beyond us--so that to-morrow
we shall not find ourselves surpassing him as the first man you would
meet out there on the street surpasses the Christian God even in the
common virtues. That was the fourth dimension of religion that I wanted,
Nance--faith in a God that a fearless man could worship."

He lighted his pipe again, and as the match blazed up she saw the absent
look still in his eyes. By it she realised how far away from her he
was--realised it with a little sharp sense of desolation. He smoked a
while before speaking.

"Out there in the mountains, Nance, I thought about these things a long
time--the years went before I knew it. At first I stayed with this
healing chap, only after a while he started back to teach again and they
found him dead. He believed he had a mission to save the world, and that
he would live until he accomplished it. But there he was, dead for want
of a little food. Then I stayed a long time alone--until I began to feel
that I, too, had something for the world. It began to burn in my bones.
I thought of him, dead and the world not caring that he hadn't saved
it--not even knowing it was lost. But I kept thinking--a man can be so
much more than himself when he is alone--and it seemed to me that I saw
at least two things the world needed to know--two things that would
teach men to stop being cowards and leaners."

Her sympathy was quick and ardent.

"Oh, Bernal," she said warmly, "you made me believe when you believed
nothing--and now, when I need it above all other times, you make me
believe again! And you've come back w