He smiled apologetically.
"I beg your pardon.

I--I couldn't have been listening." "I merely asked," repeated Floud, "how you expect to satisfy humanity with the vague hope that you would substitute for the Christian promise of eternal life." He stared stupidly at the questioner.
"I--I don't know." He passed a hand slowly upward over his forehead.
"Really I can hardly trouble about those matters--there's so much life to live.

I think I knew a moment ago, but I seem to have forgotten, though it's doubtless no great loss.

I dare say it's more important to be unafraid of life than to be unafraid of death." "You were full of reasons a moment ago," reminded Whittaker--"some of them not uninteresting." "Was I?
Oh, well, it's a small matter--I've somehow lost hold of it." He laughed awkwardly.

"It seems to have come to me just now that those who study an apple until it falls from its stem and rots are even more foolish than those who pluck and eat." Again he was silent, with a great hidden impatience for them to be gone.
But Whittaker, the wicked Unitarian, detained them still a moment longer.
"How hardly we should believe in a God who saved every one!" he breathed softly to the remains of his cigar.
"Humph! Such a God would be a mere mush of concession!" retorted Floud, the Baptist.
"And how true," pursued the unruffled Unitarian, "that we cannot worship a 'mere mush of concession'-- how true that our God must hate what we hate, and punish what we would punish.