us castaways!"

"As we are on this subject," said Alwyn, with a tinge of satire in
his tone, "if you grant a God, and make Him out to be supreme
Love, why in the name of His supposed inexhaustible beneficence
should we be castaways at all?"

"Because in our overweening pride and egotism we have ELECTED to
be such," replied Heliobas. "As angels have fallen, so have we.
But we are not altogether castaways now, since this signal," and
he touched the cross on his breast, "shone in heaven."

Alwyn shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

"Pardon me," he murmured coldly, "with every desire to respect
your religious scruples, I really cannot, personally speaking,
accept the tenets of a worn-out faith, which all the most
intellectual minds of the day reject as mere ignorant
superstition. The carpenter's son of Judea was no doubt a very
estimable person,--a socialist teacher whose doctrines were very
excellent in theory but impossible of practice. That there was
anything divine about Him I utterly deny; and I confess I am
surprised that you, a man of evident culture, do not seem to see
the hollow absurdity of Christianity as a system of morals and
civilization. It is an ever-sprouting seed of discord and hatred
between nations; it has served as a casus belli of the most
fanatical and merciless character; it is answerable for whole seas
of cruel and unnecessary bloodshed ..."

"Have you nothing NEW to say on the subject?" interposed Heliobas,