good and the evil as they come and getting all we can out of life
until it leaves us, after which we need not trouble. You had a
good time for a little while and were happy in it; now you are
having a bad time and are wretched. Perhaps in the future, when
your mental balance has re-asserted itself, you will have other
good times in the afternoon of your days, and then follow
twilight and the dark. That is all there is to hope for, and we
may as well look the thing in the face. Only I confess, my dear
fellow, that your experience convinces me that marriage should be
avoided at whatever inconvenience. Indeed I have long wondered
that anyone can take the responsibility of bringing a child into
the world. But probably nobody does in cold blood, except
misguided idiots like Bastin," he added. "He would have twenty,
had not his luck intervened."

"Then you believe in nothing, Friend," I said.

"Nothing, I am sorry to say, except what I see and my five
senses appreciate."

"You reject all possibility of miracle, for instance?"

"That depends on what you mean by miracle. Science shows us all
kinds of wonders which our great grandfathers would have called
miracles, but these are nothing but laws that we are beginning to
understand. Give me an instance."

"Well," I replied at hazard, "if you were assured by someone
that a man could live for a thousand years?"