Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/60

 harassed by cares and worry, the cheap ceremonies of court, the petty bickerings of those about him, rumors of impending wars, the poverty of some of his subjects, the constant dread of assassination, and at the end of the day a couch shared with a woman whom he has been forced to marry for the good of his country, a woman whom he doesn't love and who doesn't love him. He is educated beyond his intellect, crushed by regal robes and ceremony. It is a lasting wonder that any king lives long after he ascends to the throne. Broadly speaking it is not an ascent at all. It is a descent, a descent into the valley of everlasting gloom."

He laughed softly. "I talk too much," he ended abruptly. "I should have been a preacher. I'd make a perfect one, for I never know what I am talking about."

"Why did you not become one?" asked Mary.

"Because I've never believed in anything."

"You mean you don't believe in God?"

"I try not to," said he, "but I waver in my purpose every time I behold the dawn. Then I feel that God is in the open Helds. He speaks to the flowers. He listens to the wind voices. And He weeps for humanity because man finds Him so elusive. Fools look for God in high places when He is perhaps sitting by the roadside watching children playing in a field and softly smiling."

"You are an odd man," Mary said reflectively. "You profess not to believe in God, yet at this moment as I listen to you speaking, God never seemed so close to me."

"It is not because of me," he explained. "It is because you live close to the soil and can gaze far off over the tranquil country."

"But never till this moment have I been conscious that it possessed a certain spirituality."

Garland lighted a cigarette. "We see in nature as in life only what we are tuned to see," he told her. "Take yourself for instance. You deny the existence of your real personality. You are loyal to a puppet. You profess to be a bad woman and I see you as good."

"And you," she whispered, "profess to be an Atheist yet in your words I have caught a glimpse of God."