‘Besides,’ he went on, heedless of her remark, ‘a man may want to escape--not from his duties--he mayn’t know what they are--but from his own weakness and shame.’ ‘But, Charley dear,’ said Mary, with a great light in her eyes, and the rest of her face as still as a sunless pond, ‘you don’t think of the sin of it. I know you are only talking, but some things oughtn’t to be talked of lightly.’ ‘What makes it a sin? It’s not mentioned in the ten commandments,’ said Charley. ‘Surely it’s against the will of God, Charley dear.’ ‘He hasn’t said anything about it, anyhow. And why should I have a thing forced upon me whether I will or not, and then be pulled up for throwing it away when I found it troublesome?’ ‘Surely I don’t quite understand you, Charley.’ ‘Well, if I must be more explicit--I was never asked whether I chose to be made or not. I never had the conditions laid before me. Here I am, and I can’t help myself--so far, I mean, as that here I am.’ ‘But life is a good thing,’ said Mary, evidently struggling with an almost overpowering horror. ‘I don’t know that. My impression is that if I had been asked--’ ‘But that couldn’t be, you know.’ ‘Then it wasn’t fair. But why couldn’t I be made for a moment or two, long enough to have the thing laid before me, and be asked whether I would accept it or not? My impression is that I would have said--No, thank you; that is, if it was fairly put.’ I hastened to offer a remark, in the hope of softening the pain such flippancy must cause her. ‘And my impression is, Charley,’ I said, ‘that if such had been possible--’ ‘Of course,’ he interrupted, ‘the God you believe in could have made me for a minute or two. He can, I suppose, unmake me now when he likes.’ ‘Yes; but could he have made you all at once capable of understanding his plans, and your own future? Perhaps that is what he is doing now--making you, by all you are going through, capable of understanding them. Certainly the question could not have been put to you before you were able to comprehend it, and this may be the only way to make you able. Surely a being who _could_ make you had a right to risk the chance, if I may be allowed such an expression, of your being satisfied in the end with what he saw to be good--so good indeed that, if we accept the New Testament story, he would have been willing to go through the same troubles himself for the same end.’ ‘No, no; not the same troubles,’ he objected. ‘According to the story to which you refer, Jesus Christ was free from all that alone makes life unendurable--the bad inside you, that will come outside whether you will or not.’ ‘I admit your objection. As to the evil coming out, I suspect it is better it should come out, so long as it is there. But the end is not yet; and still I insist the probability is that, if you could know it all now, you would say with submission, if not with hearty concurrence--“Thy will be done.”’