the light side
of an object, it is only because the shadow is turned from you. It is so
with men; one side is sun, the other shadow. Sometimes the light, only,
is presented to view, but the darker side is none the less there because
unseen. Nature is never unbalanced. Whatever of brightness there is
toward the sun there must be an equal amount of shadow opposing, with
all the intergradations between. If the light is dim the shadow is soft;
if the light is brilliant the shadow is black. Some of us are turned
white side to the world, some the reverse; some show the white and the
black alternately."

The man in the chair settled himself comfortably to listen. He liked
nothing better than to see the artist in his present mood, offering a
word now and then that was likely to draw out his peculiar ideas.

"You believe in fate, then, and the absence of moral freedom," he said
reflectively.

"I believe nothing. Belief is not the word. What is, is right. To assert
otherwise is an insult to the Supreme. He is all powerful, hence--wrong
cannot exist."

"I should be glad to hear your argument in support of that position."

"Argument! It is a self-evident truth! Argument is not necessary!
Argument is never necessary! If an assertion is not true no amount of
discussion will make it so, while the truth requires no support."

The other had lighted a pipe, and was smoking lazily.

"Well," he said, as the artist paused; "at least those who have crossed
over have solved the mystery."

"Oh, they have! And how do you know that anyone has crossed over? You do
not believe in the mortality nor the slumber of the soul; no more do I;
but time exists only with life. A man dies and in the same instant opens
his eyes upon eternity, and yet a million of years may have been swept
away in that instant. As a tired child you have fallen asleep. A moment
later you have been called by your mother to breakfast. And yet, in that
moment of dreamless sleep, the long winter night had passed. Adam, the
first man, closing his eyes in death; you and I, who will do the same
ten, twenty, forty years hence, and the generations who will follow us
for a million years, perhaps, will waken to eternity, if there be a
waking, in one and the same instant of time, without a knowledge of the
intervening years. There were no years. Eternity has no beginning, no
end, no measurement."

He paused a moment, then suddenly burst out again.

"Nothing in life is real--it