A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.

"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron, he calls tha an
infidel. But he hasn't read the books you an' I have read, I'll uphold
yer!"

The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud
gesture.

The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some passion
within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on
his face in the half light.

"It's not books that settle it, Jim. I'll try and put it to you--just as
I see it myself--just in the way it comes to me."

He paused a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The
hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to
him--the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it; the craving
for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith; the human cry expressed
in this strange catechism.

"Stop me if I tire you," he said at last. "I don't know if I can make it
plain--but to me, Bateson, there are two worlds that every man is
concerned with. There is this world of everyday life--work and business,
sleeping and talking, eating and drinking--that you and I have been
living in; and there is another world, within it, and alongside of it,
that we know when we are quiet--when we listen to our own hearts, and
follow that voice I spoke of just now. Jesus Christ called that other
world the Kingdom of God--and those who dwell in it, the children of God.