As he spoke he felt that his words were rather an excuse for his convictions than a proclamation of them. "You see, governor," said Latimer-Moire, "Gilderman still clings to the old theological superstitions of the past ages--heaven and God and a resurrection of the soul and all that sort of thing. He's a good fellow, is Gildy, but he don't seem to be able to emancipate himself from the shackles of tradition that his grandfather left behind him. Why, Gildy, my boy, nobody believes in anything nowadays." "Don't they?" said Gilderman. "I think they do. If they don't believe in heaven and God and the resurrection of the soul, as you phrase it, they must believe in the world, the devil, and themselves." "You are wrong, Mr. Gilderman," said Governor Pilate, calmly, "so far as I am concerned. I don't believe in anything--not even in myself. I know I like a good dinner and a good glass of wine and a pretty woman, but I don't believe in them. As for all this about Christ, to tell you the truth, I have not followed it very closely, for it doesn't interest me particularly. I have heard a good deal said about it now and then--such as you young men have been talking just now--but I have read nothing of it in the newspapers. I find life too short to read everything that's printed nowadays. If one undertakes to read everything, one reads nothing. I try to pick out what is absolutely needful to me and to leave the rest. I find all I need in the report of current politics and the stock markets." * * * * * Olivia Carrington was acting in the play called "Le Chevalier d'Amour." The great scene that had made such a hit was where she, as the Marquise, dances upon the top of the table in the inn yard, seducing the jailers from their duty while the scamp of a chevalier escapes. Gilderman sat watching the woman in her gyrations amid a cloud of gauzy draperies. He recognized the pleasure he felt in the seductive spectacle as an evil pleasure, rooted in a nether stratum of masculine brutality, but, nevertheless, he yielded himself to it. As the girl came forward in answer to the loud applause and bowed her acknowledgment to the house, she shot a glance like a flash at the box where Gilderman and his friend sat. "Isn't she a daisy, Gildy?" said Stirling West enthusiastically, as he continued to clap his hands together. "Come on around back of the scenes and I'll introduce you." * * * * * It was thus that the life of the Romans just touched the divine agony of that other life lived by the poor carpenter who was Jehovah-God in the flesh; it was thus that their two lives just touched but did not commingle. VIII ONE OF THEM NAMED CAIAPHAS BEING HIGH-PRIEST THAT SAME YEAR DURING the winter it became more and more certain that Bishop Godkin was dying, and that Dr. Caiaphas would be chosen his successor.