Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/83

 One has to say to oneself 'I believe,' and everything will come right, everything will appear as you want it, it will explain itself to you and attract you. Now, you love much, and faith is only a greater love: you must love still more, and then your love will turn to faith. When one loves a woman, she is, unfailingly, the best woman on earth, and each loves the best woman, and that is faith. A non-believer cannot love: to-day he falls in love with one woman, and next year with another. The souls of such men are tramps living barren lives—that is not good. But you were born a believer, and it is no use thwarting yourself. Well, you may say beauty? And what is beauty? The highest and most perfect is God."

He hardly ever spoke to me on this subject, and its seriousness and the suddenness of it rather overwhelmed me. I was silent.

He was sitting on the couch with his legs drawn up under him, and breaking into a triumphant little smile and shaking his finger at me, he said: "You won't get out of this by silence, no."

And I, who do not believe in God, looked at him for some reason very cautiously and a little timidly, I looked and thought: "The man is godlike."