"You see," he said, "I've always believed in Salvation. I suppose a man's shy of saying so--even to his wife. But I've always believed more or less distinctly that there was something up to which a life worked--always. It's been rather vague, I'll admit. I don't think I've ever believed in individual salvation. You see, I feel these are deep things, and the deeper one gets the less individual one becomes. That's why one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness--and finds them hard to tell. One has an individual voice, or an individual birthmark, or an individualized old hat, but the soul--the soul's different.... It isn't me talking to you when it comes to that.... This question of what we are doing with life isn't a question to begin with for you and me as ourselves, but for you and me as mankind. Am I spinning it too fine, Madge?" "No," she said, intent; "go on." "You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie, it's ourselves, but when we talk religion--it's mankind. You've either got to be Everyman in religion or leave it alone. That's my idea. It's no more presumptuous to think for the race than it is for a beggar to pray--though that means going right up to God and talking to Him. Salvation's a collective thing and a mystical thing--or there isn't any. Fancy the Almighty and me sitting up and keeping Eternity together! God and R. A. G. Trafford, F.R.S.--that's silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting before God! That's caricature. But God and Man! That's sense, Marjorie."... He stopped and stared at her. Marjorie sat red-lit, regarding him. "Queer things you say!" she said. "So much of this I've never thought out. I wonder why I've never done so.... Too busy with many things, I suppose. But go on and tell me more of these secrets you've kept from me!" "Well, we've got to talk of these things as mankind--or just leave them alone, and shoot pheasants."... "If I could shoot a pheasant now!" whispered Marjorie, involuntarily. "And where do we stand? What do we need--I mean the whole race of us--kings and beggars together? You know, Marjorie, it's this,--it's Understanding. That's what mankind has got to, the realization that it doesn't understand, that it can't express, that it's purblind. We haven't got eyes for those greater things, but we've got the promise--the intimation of eyes. We've come out of an unsuspecting darkness, brute animal darkness, not into sight, that's been the mistake, but into a feeling of illumination, into a feeling of light shining through our opacity.... "I feel that man has now before all things to know. That's his supreme duty, to feel, realize, see, understand, express himself to the utmost limits of his power."