Mrs. Alderling stood looking at him, not me, with a smile hovering about
the corners of her mouth, which, when it decided not to alight anywhere,
scarcely left her aspect graver for its flitting. She said at last, in
her slow, deep-throated voice, "I guess I will let you tell him."

"Oh, I'll tell him fast enough," said Alderling, nursing his knee, and
bringing it well up toward his chin, between his clasped hands. "Marion
has always had the notion that I should live again if I believed I
should, and that as I don't believe I shall, I am not going to. The joke
of it is," and he began to splutter laughter round the stem of his pipe,
"she's as much of an agnostic as I am. She doesn't believe she is going
to live again, either."

Mrs. Alderling said, "I don't care for it in my case." That struck me as
rather touching, but I had no right to enter uninvited into the intimacy
of her meaning, and I said, looking as little at her as I need, "Aren't
you both rather belated?"

"You mean that protoplasm has gone out?" he chuckled.

"Not exactly," I answered. "But you know that a great many things are
allowed now that were once forbidden to the True Disbeliever."

"You mean that we may trust in the promises, as they used to be called,
and still keep the Unfaith?"

"Something like that."