'Alas!' cried Paul, 'what can be done to convince one half of Humanity that it is really devoted to the higher pleasures and does not care for the lower--at least nothing to speak of?' The poor man was in a state of dreadful perplexity, and felt wellnigh distracted. At last a light broke in on him. He remembered that as one of his most revered masters, Professor Tyndall, had admitted, a great part of Humanity would always need a religion, and that Virginia now had none. He at once rushed back to her. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'all is explained now. You cannot be in love with me, for that would be unlawful passion. Unlawful passion is unreasonable, and unreasonable passion would quite upset a system of pure reason, which is what exact thought shows us is soon going to govern the world. No! the emotions that you fancy are directed to me are in reality cosmic emotion--in other words, are the reasonable religion of the future. I must now initiate you in its solemn and unspeakably significant worship.' 'Religion!' exclaimed Virginia, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. 'It is not kind of you to be making fun of me. There is no God, no soul, and no supernatural order, and above all there is no hell. How then can you talk to me about religion?' 'You,' replied Paul, 'are associating religion with theology, as indeed the world hitherto always has done. But those two things, as Professor Huxley well observes, have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "It may be," says that great teacher, "that the object of a man's religion is an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or----"' 'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'that is my religion, Paul.' 'Nonsense!' replied Paul; 'that cannot be the religion of half Humanity, else high, holy, solemn, awful morality would never be able to stand on its own basis. See, the night has fallen, the glorious moon has arisen, the stupendous stars are sparkling in the firmament. Come down with me to the sea-shore, where we may be face to face with nature, and I will show you then what true religion--what true worship is.' The two went out together. They stood on the smooth sands, which glittered white and silvery in the dazzling moonlight All was hushed. The gentle murmur of the trees, and the soft splash of the sea, seemed only to make the silence audible. The Professor paused close beside Virginia, and took her hand. Virginia liked that, and thought that religion without theology was not perhaps so bad after all. Meanwhile Paul had fixed his eyes on the moon. Then, in a voice almost broken with emotion, he whispered, 'The prayer of the man of science, it has been said, must be for the most part of the silent sort. He who said that was wrong. It need not be silent; it need only be inarticulate. I have discovered an audible and a reasonable liturgy which will give utterance to the full to the religion of exact thought. Let us both join our voices, and let us croon at the moon.'