What a bungler I was, and how long it took me to remove the piece of simple ribbon, need not here be described. I know that while my trembling fingers were about her neck, Jessie, in reply to a look, said, 'Yes, you may, Chris;' and that I kissed her. 'And now, Chris,' she said, 'I want to speak to you about something that is troubling me very much. When you said the other night that uncle Bryan was an atheist, were you in earnest?' 'I said what I believed,' I answered with an uneasy feeling. 'And he _is_ an atheist?' 'I am afraid he is, Jessie.' 'Has he ever told you so?' 'Oh, no; there are some things that one scarcely dares to speak of.' 'That is if one is weak and a coward. I am not that, and I don't think you are, Chris. Then I suppose you have never spoken to uncle Bryan about religion?' 'Not a word has ever passed between us upon religious matters.' 'An atheist is a person who does not believe in God, is he not, Chris?' I was sensible that the discussion of so solemn a subject might lead to grave results, and I wished to discontinue it; but Jessie said: 'Don't be weak, Chris; I think I ought to know these things, and if we can't speak together in confidence, no two persons in the world can. Of course I can easily find out what I want to know; Gus West will tell me everything; but I came to you because we are nearer to each other.' 'Nearer and dearer, Jessie.' 'Yes, Chris; and now tell me what you know.' I told her all that I knew concerning atheism, and all that I knew concerning uncle Bryan in connection with it. 'When I was a boy, Jessie, scarcely a week after we came to live with uncle Bryan, I heard him say that life was tasteless to him, and that he believed in nothing. I thought of it often afterwards.' 'Life was tasteless to him _because_ he did not believe in anything; that is the proper view to take of it. If a person does not believe in anything, he cannot love anything. Can you imagine anything more dreary than the life of a person who does not love anybody, and who has nobody to love him? I can't. A person might as well be a stick or a stone--better to be that, for then he couldn't feel. But the words that uncle Bryan used may not have meant what you suppose, Chris.' 'They came in this way, Jessie. On the first Sunday we were here, mother asked uncle Bryan if he was going to church. He said that he never went to church. Mother was very sorry, I saw, but she did not say anything more. On that same night, uncle Bryan was reading a book, and he read aloud some passages from it. Mother asked him what was the name of the book, and he answered, _The Age of Reason_. When he laid the book aside, mother took it up, and looked at it; and then she sent me upstairs for the Bible. That was all; but I didn't quite know what was the real meaning of it until a long time afterwards, when I found out what kind of a book _The Age of Reason_ is.' 'Tell me what it is.'