Mr. Spalding said he’d no business to mind, no right to reproach her, since they were all in the same boat. They had, all three, deserved their punishment. “Punishment?” (Jeffreson spoke). “Why, where does he think he is?” “I’m in hell, aren’t I? If—” “If _we’re_ here. Is that it?” “Well, Jeffreson, I don’t want to rake up old unpleasantness, but after—after what happened, you’ll forgive my saying so, but what else _can_ I think?” He heard Jeffreson laugh; a perfectly natural laugh. “Will _you_ tell him, Elizabeth, or shall I?” “You’d better. He always respected your intelligence.” “Well, old chap, if you really want to know where you are, you’re in heaven.” “You don’t mean to say so?” “Fact. I daresay you’re wondering what we’re doing here?” “Well, Elizabeth—perhaps. But, frankly, Jeffreson, _you_——” “Yes. How about me?” “With your record I should have thought you’d even less business here than I have.” “Wouldn’t you? I lived on unpaid bills. I drank. I drugged. There was nothing I didn’t do. What do you suppose I got in on? You’ll never guess.” “No. No. I give it up.” “My love of beauty. You wouldn’t think it, but it seems that actually counts here, in the eternal world.” “And Elizabeth, what did she get in on?” “Her love of me.” “Then all I can say is,” said Mr. Spalding, “Heaven must be a most immoral place.” “Oh, no. Your parochial morality doesn’t hold good here, that’s all. Why should it? It’s entirely relative. Relative to a social system with limits in time and space. Relative to a certain biological configuration that ceased with our terrestrial organisms. Not absolute. Not eternal. “But beauty—Beauty _is_ eternal, is absolute. And I—I loved beauty more than credit, more than drink or drugs or women, more even than Elizabeth. “And love is eternal. And Elizabeth loved me more than you, more than respectability, more than peace and comfort, and a happy life.” “That’s all very well, Jeffreson; and Elizabeth may be all right. Mary Magdalene, you know, _Quia multum amavit_, and so forth. But if a blackguard like you can slip into heaven as easily as all that, where _are_ our ethics?” “Your ethics, my dear Spalding, are where they’ve always been, where you came from, not here. And if I _was_ what they call a bad man, that’s to say a bad terrestrial organism, I was a thundering good poet. You say I slipped in easily; do you suppose it’s easy to be a poet? My dear fellow, it requires an inflexibility, a purity, a discipline of mind—of _mind_, remember—that you haven’t any conception of. And surely _you_ should be the last person in the world to regard mind as an inferior secondary affair. Anyhow, the consequence is that I’ve not only got into heaven, I’ve got into one of the best heavens, a heaven reserved exclusively for the very finest spirits.” “Then,” said Mr. Spalding, “if we’re in heaven, who’s in hell?” “Couldn’t say for certain. But we shouldn’t put it that way. We should say: Who’s gone back to earth?”