"But truth is truth," George would have replied.
What you profess to teach them might be a fact, but could never be a truth, I answer. And the veiy value which you falsely put upon facts you have learned to attribute to them from the supposed existence of something at the root of all facts--namely, TRUTHS, or eternal laws of being. Still, if you believe that men will be happier from learning your discovery that there is no God, preach it, and prosper in proportion to its truth. No; that from my pen would be a curse--no, preach it not, I say, until you have searched all spaces of space, up and down, in greatness and smallness--where I grant indeed, but you cannot know, that you will not find him--and all regions of thought and feeling, all the unknown mental universe of possible discovery--preach it not until you have searched that also, I say, lest what you count a truth should prove to be no fact, and there should after all be somewhere, somehow, a very, living God, a Truth indeed, in whom is the universe. If you say, "But I am convinced there is none," I answer--You may be convinced that there is no God such as this or that in whom men imagine they believe, but you cannot be convinced there is no God.
Meantime George did not forget the present of this life in its future, continued particular about his cigars and his wine, ate his dinners with what some would call a good conscience and I would call a dull one, were I sure it was not a good digestion they really meant, and kept reading hard and to purpose.
Matters as between the two made no rapid advance. George went on loving Helen more than any other woman, and Helen went on liking George next best to her brother Leopold. Whether it came of prudence, of which George possessed not a little, of coldness of temperament, or a pride that would first be sure of acceptance, I do not know, but he made no formal offer yet of handing himself over to Helen, and certainly Helen was in no haste to hear, more than he to utter, the irrevocable.
One Tuesday morning, in the spring, the curate received by the local post the following letter dated from The Park-Gate.
"An obligation on my part which you have no doubt forgotten gives me courage to address you on a matter which seems to me of no small consequence concerning yourself. You do not know me, and the name at the end of my letter will have for you not a single association. The matter itself must be its own excuse.