"I fear all I have not learned," he said. "I fear the revelation of what people suffer, of what you have suffered, of what Christ suffered. I fear that all suffering, in its degree, is atonement. I don't believe it, mind you, but I am afraid it may be true, and that somehow I shall have to believe it. I am not a Christian, and so I put it that a man who was as infinitely above the rest of mankind as Shakespeare is above the child which is idiotic from its birth and has never felt the warmth of the slightest spark of reason, found it necessary to die, and believed that his death atoned for the sins of the whole world. Ah, if I only believed that he was right, how instinctively I should believe that he was God. No one but God could have thought of that." He paused a moment. "But I am beginning to think that I shall not die without believing it," he said. "I don't think that even the death of the body could come to this body of mine unless I became convinced of the necessity for suffering and for death. Why am I beginning to think that? I can't possibly say; there is never any reason for one's believing anything, except the conviction that it must be so. Evelyn, I remember, once talked to me about it. At that time I was satisfied with my own reasoning; now I am not. I said to him then that my _métier_ was the realisation of joy. Well, at present I know nothing that invalidates that belief. But I see clearly now the possibility that he was right, in which case it is possible that my fears, about which you asked, are right also. Mind, I am not afraid in any case. I would sooner see all the sorrows of the world, and realise them, as far as I am able, than turn aside. But my fear is that I may be called upon to realise them. I shall not like it, but if that is to be, I can assure you that I shall not attempt to turn back. Not one step of the way which I have gone along would I retrace. I will meet them all, I will realise them all. And, in my own language, that means that I shall see Pan, the god of all Nature, of the suffering and sorrow of Nature as well as the illimitable life and joy of her. And to tell you the truth, I think it quite probable that I may have to do so." The rain had stopped, and a sudden sough of the wind in the bushes sounded as if some animal had strayed there. Twigs creaked as if broken; small branches swayed. Also, so it seemed to Philip, the wind brought with it some faint, indefinable aroma, evoked no doubt by this rain from some shrub in the garden. But for all his horticultural knowledge, he could not give a name to it; it was pungent, of an animal flavour to the nostrils, and reminded him, with the instantaneous evoking of memory which scent possesses above all the other senses, of a _châlet_ in which he had once taken refuge from a sudden mountain storm in some Alp above Zermatt. Tom, too, just then threw back his head, and seemed to sniff for a moment in the air. But he made no comment, and continued--