Segal took off his cap and made an awkward gesture towards the implicit deity. "Right-ho!" he exclaimed, "Happen away!" Philip held his breath for a moment. Nothing took place. Only a cow mooed contentedly. Segal was slightly taller than Harry and a little his senior. The angle of his nose related him more directly than either of his two friends to the root stock of his race. Yet he had neither the Heinesque vehemence of the one nor the inveterate romance of the other. He could, in fact, hardly be thought of in terms of character. He seemed to be the sum of certain intellectual qualities. His sole morbidity was a ruthless passion for logic. Poetry, which in various ways had brought the three youths together, interested him, but neither for ethical nor for æsthetic reasons. Each poem was an interesting proposition in itself, like a mixture in a test tube at his school laboratory. It had the mechanical attributes of rhythm and rhyme and metaphor constructing a mechanical whole. But on thinking the matter over, after frequent and painful discussion, Philip realized that Segal's attitude so shocked him because it dared to put into blunt words something he had long been timorously feeling. By the Bible, of course, Segal meant religion generally. The Bible was the foundation of Judaism and therefore of Christianity, which, he had long ago decided, in any case hadn't much claim to serious consideration. His own remark had been sound enough; he had declared that the disappearance of religion would leave the world "jolly empty." But empty of what things? Empty as a garden without weeds. What stupidity, cruelty, ignorance, flourished below the damp boughs of religion from border to border of the world! And what things would still flourish if religion were cut down! Tall trees of liberty, fine flowers of poetry! What was it he had always felt wrong with Judaism? What did it lack? It was a quality not entirely missing even from the garbled Christianity that came his way. The Baptist Missionary Chapel was as fervent an enemy of this quality as the most vigorous Judaism. But dim intimations had come by him on the wind of another Christian spirit. Here there were white lilies and blue gowns pointed with stars; there was soft singing at evening and the burning of many candles; there were superb altars, marble and kingly. Superb altars--the Baptist Missionary Chapel! Christianity contained both. But this quality was eternally triumphant in the grand false superstitions of Greece and Rome. Here there were white pillars in a noon of hyacinth; baskets of wrought gold held violets and primroses; there were processions of chiselled gods before whom maidens scattered a long foam of petals; there were lads running races and the wind was in their hair; the wind was a god, there were gods in the thickets of olive and in the translucent caves of the sea.