"What do you know of the Nunc Dimittis?" he asked at last, with a
half-smile. "You might as well say PATER NOSTER,--both canticle
and prayer would be equally unmeaning to you! For poet as you
are,--or let me say as you WERE,--inasmuch as no atheist was ever
a poet at the same time--"

"You are wrong," interrupted Alwyn quickly. "Shelley was an
atheist."

"Shelley, my good friend, was NOT an atheist [Footnote: See the
last two verses of Adonais]. He strove to be one,--nay, he made
pretence to be one,--but throughout his poems we hear the voice of
his inner and better self appealing to that Divinity and Eternity
which, in spite of the material part of him, he instinctively felt
existent in his own being. I repeat, poet as your WERE, and poet
as you will be again when the clouds on your mind are cleared,--
you present the strange, but not uncommon spectacle of an Immortal
Spirit fighting to disprove its own Immortality. In a word, you
will not believe in the Soul."

"I cannot!" said Alwyn, with a hopeless gesture.

"Why?"

"Science can give us no positive proof of its existence; it cannot
be defined."

"What do you mean by Science?" demanded Heliobas. "The foot of the
mountain, at which men now stand, grovelling and uncertain how to