Paul started, and looked at her almost with awe. He saw it all so plainly. He had sat down to write one evening after a dull heavy day when all the growing doubt and despair in his soul had been surging around him. He had written of a dying sun, a barren waste, a wearied walk, a lost hope; yet he had not seen this--no, no, not this. "It was an ordinary day," said Paul. "To you perhaps. To me it meant a life." "But it's wrong of life," he said. She hesitated. "Speaking generally, I agree," she answered, "but why do you say so?" "That fallen god, that empty temple," he urged, suddenly, almost passionately moved, he could hardly say why. "I see." She was quite deliberate. "I remember what Arnold said. You have still an idol in the shrine." "God," said Paul reverently, "only He is no idol." "There is no god," said Ursula. If she had lashed him with a whip, he could not have been more startled, more outraged. There, in that sunny window, looking out over that gay garden, this attractive, striking, interesting girl, for whose work and thought he had already a youthful generous impulse, had suddenly blasphemed. And she had done it so coolly, so unemotionally. "There is no god," she had said, exactly as if she had passed a detached criticism on art or verse. And yet no ringing affirmation, no dogmatic assertion to equal hers, sprang to his lips. Conflict and pain had done more in his heart than he had guessed. "Oh, there must be, there must be!" was all that he could cry, as if he hoped against hope. Ursula took the picture from his hand and their eyes met. Even in his distress, he saw the miracle. Hers were utterly serene. He knew his own to be inchoate, baffled, grieved. And yet in her serenity, too, was a touch of kindliness, and a kind of deep wonder of understanding as if, despite her empty heaven, she looked on mystery. Something deep down in him stirred before those eyes of hers. He forgot that he had only known her half a morning. He forgot that he was a man and a Christian, and she was a girl and a heathen. And he forgot entirely that it was the fool who said in his heart there is no god. "Oh," he cried, "you've no idea how down and out I am!" She smiled and put out her hand. "I'll help," she said, "and I put it badly, too, just now. Peradventure there is a god, but, you know, we don't know even his Name and--and--he seems asleep." They were odd words, he thought vaguely, but somehow there was tenderness and strength hidden in them. Paul Kestern knew suddenly how much he wanted both. And so he reached out, too, and put his hand into hers. (3)