Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/222

210 domesticated gods. They never knew—at least Stransom never knew—how they had learned to be sure about each other. If it had been with each a question of what the other was there for, the certitude had come in some fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the instinct of propagation, and it was as natural as it was beautiful that they should have taken pleasure on the spot in the imagination of a following. If the following was for each but a following of one, it had proved in the event to be sufficient. Her debt, however, of course, was much greater than his, because while she had only given him a worshipper he had given her a magnificent temple. Once she said she pitied him for the length of his list (she had counted his candles almost as often as himself) and this made him wonder what could have been the length of hers. He had wondered before at the coincidence of their losses, especially as from time to time a new candle was set up. On some occasion some accident led him to express this curiosity, and she answered as if she was surprised that he hadn't already understood. "Oh, for me, you know, the more there are the better—there could never be too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds—I should like thousands; I should like a perfect mountain of light."

Then, of course, in a flash, he understood. "Your Dead are only One?"

She hesitated as she had never hesitated. "Only One," she answered, coloring as if now he knew