gyman's wife, but the moment that I try to
explain why, he proves to me that my reasons are good for nothing."

"Are you sure he's not right?" asked Strong.

"Perfectly sure!" replied Esther earnestly. "I can't reason it out, but
I feel it. I believe you could explain it if you would, but when I asked
you, in the worst of my trouble, you refused to help me."

"I gave you all the help I could, and I am ready to give you whatever
you want more," replied Strong.

"Tell me what you think about religion!"

Strong drew himself together with a perceptible effort: "I think about
it as little as possible," said he.

"Do you believe in a God?"

"Not in a personal one."

"Or in future rewards and punishments?"

"Old women's nursery tales!"

"Do you believe in nothing?"

"There is evidence amounting to strong probability, of the existence of
two things," said Strong, slowly, and as though in his lecture-room.

"What are they, if you please?"

"Should you know better if I said they were mind and matter?"

"You believe in nothing else?"

"N-N-No!" hesitated Strong.

"Isn't it horrible, your doctrine?"

"What of that, if it's true? I never said it was pleasant."

"Do you expect to convert any one to such a religion?"

"Great Buddha, no! I don't want to convert any one. I prefer almost any
kind of religion. No one ever took up this doctrine who could help
himself."

Esther pondered deeply for a time. Strong's trick of driving her to do
what he wanted was so old a habit that she had learned to distrust it.
At last she began again from another side.

"You really mean that this life is every thing, and the future nothing?"

"I never said so. I rather think the church is right in thinking this
life nothing and the future every thing."

"But you deny a future life!"

Strong began to feel uncomfortable. He wanted to defend his opinions,
and it became irksome to go on making out the strongest case he could
against himself.

"Come!" said he: "don't go beyond what I said. I only denied the rewards
and punishments. Mind! I'll not say there is a future life, but I don't
deny it's possibility."

"You are willing to give us a chance?" said Esther rather sarcastically.

"I don't know that you would call it one," replied Strong satisfied by
Esther's irony that he had now gone far enough. "If our minds could get
hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth
is concerned. My trouble is to fin