Page:Strange Interlude (1928).djvu/81

Rh thought of a million light years to a spiral nebula—one other universe among innumerable others. But how could that God care about our trifling misery of death-born-of-birth? I couldn’t believe in Him, and I wouldn’t if I could! I’d rather imitate His indifference and prove I had that one trait at least in common!

[Worriedly]

Nina, why don’t you lie down?

[Jeeringly]

Oh, let me talk, Charlie! They’re only words, remember! So many many words have jammed up into thoughts in my poor head! You’d better let them overflow or they’ll burst the dam! I wanted to believe in any God at any price—a heap of stones, a mud image, a drawing on a wall, a bird, a fish, a snake, a baboon—or even a good man preaching the simple platitudes of truth, those Gospel words we love the sound of but whose meaning we pass on to spooks to live by!

[Again—half-rising—frightenedly]

Nina! You ought to stop talking. You’ll work yourself into—

[He glances angrily at Darrell as if demanding that, as a doctor, he do something]