"It is easy to measure how far we have come, but who can say how far we have to go?" This metaphysical doubletalk annoyed me. "I don't know what is happening to people," I said. "Either they act like those over there," I gestured toward the Republic One and Indivisible, "or else they become mystics." "You find questions without immediate answers mystical, sir?" "I like my questions to be susceptible to an answer of some kind." "You are a man of thought." It amused me to speak intimately to this stranger. "I have lived inside myself a great many years. Naturally my mind has not been idle all the while." "You have not married?" "I never had the time." "Ah." He rowed quietly for some moments. "'Never had the time,'" he repeated thoughtfully. "You think marriage is important?" "A man without children disowns his parents." "Sounds like a proverb." "It is not. Just an observation. I suppose since you have not had the time to marry you have devoted your life to good works." "I have given employment to many, and help to the pauperized." "It is commanded to be charitable." "I have given millions of dollars--hundreds of thousands of pounds to philanthropies." "Anonymously, of course. You must be a godly man, sir." "I am an agnostic. I do not know if there is such a thing." He shook his head. "Beneath us there are fish who do not know it is the sea in which they swim; above us there are birds unaware of the reaches of the sky. The fish have no conception of sky; the birds know nothing of the deep. They are agnostics also." "Well, it doesnt seem to do them any harm. Fishes continue to spawn and birds to nest without the benefits of esoteric knowledge." "Exactly. Fish remain fish in happy ignorance; doubt does not cause a bird to falter in its flight." The sun was pushed into the air from the waters as a ball is pushed by the thumb and forefinger. The chalkcliffs were outlined ahead of me and I calculated we had little more than an hour to go. "You have chosen a strange way of earning a living, my friend," I ventured at last. "Upon some is laid the yoke of the Law, others depend upon the sun for light," he said. "Perhaps, like yourself, I have committed some great sin and am expiating it in this manner." "I don't know what you mean. I am conscious of no sin--if I understand the meaning of the theological term." "'We have trespassed,'" he murmured dreamily, "'we have been faithless, we have robbed, we have spoken basely, we have committed iniquity, we have wrought unrighteousness----'" "Since the rational world discarded the superstitions of religion halfacentury ago," I said, "we have learned that good and evil are relative terms; without meaning, actually." For the first time he suspended his oars and the boat wallowed crazily. "Excuse me," he resumed his exertions. "Good is evil sometimes and evil is good upon occasion?"