He felt the man look up at the sky and the ghostly, gray mass of the crucifix stretching across it.
"Strange creatures, these peasant people." The man's words were speculative. "Dumb kind of beasts--these soil-tillers--the best of them. Got nothing in their lives but work and religion. Don't know as I blame you for laughing when you looked up there. Sacré, but there is nothing real about religion to me!"
"You're right." He stifled a yawn. "All that sort of thing went out of the world years ago. Thinking people aren't religious nowadays. It doesn't give them enough food for logical thought. It's all too palpably obvious and absurd for an intelligent person to bother with."
"Rather a strange view for an artist, my friend, is it not?"
"Thought you fellows traded on the beauty of faith, the talk of priests, and all that sort of thing."
"Good Lord, no." His voice was energetic enough now. He was becoming interested. "All this belief in God and man and the innate good, and the rest of it, is tommyrot--That's what it is! And the soul within you--and the teachings of Christ"--he paused to regain his breath. "We'd know those things all right enough, if they were real. We'd see them, wouldn't we, if they were real? They'd happen--They couldn't help but happen--every day. But they don't, and so they're just talked about. I tell you if there were such things, we'd know it!"
"Yes--yes--Surely we would see it--some time."
"I haven't had more than the average University education," he went on. "But I've seen men and women, and I know that some of them are bad, and some of them are good, and that's all there is to it. If a man wants to be a liar--he'll lie. What's going to make him tell the truth, I'd like to know?"
"It doesn't sound like artistic idealism, this talk of yours."
"What do I care for any kind of idealism? There's too much of the poppycock--too many of those long-haired, long-winded donkeys playing the miniature creator for my taste. Lord, but I'd like to see an army of them in the field!"
In a flash he realized what he had said. Beneath his breath he cursed furiously. Never before had he been guilty of such blatant stupidity. A sudden anger welled within him against this man who had caught him in his lie. Yet the man seemed harmless and indifferent enough. Perhaps he could still get out of it. What in the name of heaven had drawn the truth from him? He glanced up at the crucifix and his cursing abruptly stopped. He fell to wondering if he had better strike out again in the dark. He couldn't tell who the man was, and he had the papers to guard. Dawn wasn't a long way off. He wondered if he ought to chance it.