e us also it was gloom;
but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw vertical
stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colossal
facade of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if
Heaven were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.

.....

The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it,
I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew
it to be literally true. And the process had been so long and full that
I answered him at once out of existing stores of explanation.

"I am becoming orthodox," I said, "because I have come, rightly or
wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief
that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than
a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a
pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy
disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse
than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his
shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in
his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because it is dangerous."

"You mean dangerous to morality," he said in a voice of wonderful
gentleness. "I expect you are right. But why do you care about
morality?"

I glanced at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a
trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the
bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and
high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that
he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an
unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a
burst of red sparks broke past.

"Aren't those sparks splendid?" I said.

"Yes," he replied.

"That is all that I ask you to admit," said I. "Give me those few red
specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you,
that one's pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and
go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the
fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now
I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of
virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits,
which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say 'Thank you'
for a bun are you now abl