Chapter 7 — Niels declares for atheism

An evening in Mrs. Boye's drawing room some weeks after Niels has been folded into the circle. The room is full. There is a young woman who has just published a translation; there is an editor; there are two students besides Erik and Niels; there is Hjerrild, the editor and journalist whose voice the novel will return to in chapter 9. They have been arguing about something cheerful — the German poets, the new theatre — and someone, in the way that someone always does, turns the conversation toward religion. The believers in the room — there are believers — speak first, in the patient way of educated people who have agreed not to be rude.

Niels speaks. He has been in the room for weeks without speaking on this subject; he speaks now. He has held his position privately since his aunt Edele's deathbed eight years before, and he says, plainly, that he does not believe in God. He says it without the posture of a young man trying to shock; the novel is careful about this. He says it as a position he has long held and is willing now to declare. He does not lecture; he does not perform. He answers the room's question with the answer the room had not actually expected.

The conversation goes on. Mrs. Boye, who has more experience of these declarations than the young men in the room, redirects the talk before it can go bad. Hjerrild looks at Niels with the long, careful look of an older man who has just identified a younger one. The chapter ends on the walk home, Niels and Erik together, Erik teasing him a little and Niels — half pleased, half uneasy — registering that the position he has long held has now become the position he will be known for. The first cost of holding it has begun. The novel does not announce this. It records it.