I am sure, could she have only understood, a little, the philosophy that my father had taught me. My father was a very remarkable man, Mr. Harkness, as perhaps you have perceived, and he had, as I have told you, shown me the real meaning of this strange life in which we are forced, against our wills, to take part. It was foolish of my wife not to benefit by this knowledge. But she did not, and died sooner than I had anticipated, leaving me one child.
"A widower's life is not a happy one, and you will have undoubtedly perceived how many widowers marry again."
He paused as though he expected some comment, so Harkness said yes, that he had perceived it. Crispin sat forward looking at him inquisitively, and making, with his fingers, a kind of pattern in the air as though he were tracing there a bar of music.
"Yes. I did not marry again, but rather gave myself up to the continuation of my father's philosophy. The philosophy of pain as related to power one might perhaps term it. God—of Whose existence no thinking man can truly permit himself to doubt—have you ever thought, Mr. Harkness, that the whole of His power is derived from the pain that He inflicts upon those less powerful than Himself? We conceive of Him as a beneficent Being, and from that it follows that He must have deter-
