"Why?"

"Why? Because I am a Catholic."

"That is not what I asked you. Why are you a Catholic? if I must make
myself more plain. Why are you afraid to disobey? Why do you cling to
the Church with your back braced against your intelligence? It is hope
of future reward, I suppose,--or fear?"

"Sure. I want to go to the heaven of the good Catholic."

"Do not waste this life, particularly the youth of it, preparing for
a legendary hereafter. Granting, for the sake of argument, that this
existence is supplemented by another: you have no knowledge of what
elements you will be composed when you lay aside your mortal part to
enter there. Your power of enjoyment may be very thin indeed, like the
music of a band without brass; the sort of happiness one can imagine a
human being to experience out of whose anatomy the nervous system has
by some surgical triumph been removed, and in whom love of the arts
alone exists, abnormally cultivated. But one thing we of earth do
know; you do not, but I will tell you; we have a slight capacity for
happiness and a large capacity for enjoyment. There is not much in
life, God knows, but there is something. One can get a reasonable
amount out of it with due exercise of philosophy. Of that we are sure.
Of what comes after we are absolutely unsure."

She had endeavored to interrupt him once or twice, and did so now, her
eyes flashing. "Are you an atheist?" she demanded, abruptly. "Are you
not a Catholic?"