Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/273

 the veranda of the café at Fort George. And looking out thoughtfully at the actors strutting and posturing against the glow of the footlights, he tried to tell her of another conclusion which had come to him in his solitary debates with himself.

"Almost the first thing I can remember," he said, "is the Christmas Eve when I found out that there was no Santa Claus. I don't think—I can't tell you what a shock it was." He smiled. "Nothing that has happened to me since—about religion—hit me harder. . . . But don't you see that there is a Santa Claus! He isn't a man in a fur coat—and a reindeer sleigh and all that—but he is the spirit of Christmas, isn't he? They've personified that, and made a saint of him, and invented legends about him—for the children—but when we're no longer children, and don't believe in him, we still have that Christmas spirit—and it's that that gives presents and makes us feel kindly towards one another, and makes Christmas what it is. . . Isn't it? . . . Well, that's the way it is about these other things. They're true—if they're not true in the way we used to think they were."

She nodded, somewhat nervously. She felt the absurdity of such a conversation in such surroundings, and she was afraid that someone might overhear it. She was relieved when the stage dialogue gave them the cue to retire into the wings, where they parted.

Nevertheless, she admired in him this almost ludicrous earnestness, as one admires in another a quality which shame conceals in oneself. She gave up her