s of their own limitations, an official, a
politician--how would they put it?--'with many things to consider....'

"It's my weakness to be drawn into quarrels. It's a thing I have to
guard against....

"What does it all amount to? It is like a fight between navvies in
a tunnel to settle the position of the Pole star. It doesn't concern
us.... Oh! it doesn't indeed concern us. It's a scuffle in the darkness,
and our business, the business of all brains, the only permanent good
work is to light up the world.... There will be mischief and hatred
here and suppression and then forgetfulness, and then things will go on
again, a little better or a little worse...."

"I'm tired of this place, White, and of all such places. I'm tired of
the shouting and running, the beating and shooting. I'm sick of all the
confusions of life's experience, which tells only of one need amidst an
endless multitude of distresses. I've seen my fill of wars and disputes
and struggles. I see now how a man may grow weary at last of life and
its disorders, its unreal exacting disorders, its blunders and its
remorse. No! I want to begin upon the realities I have made for myself.
For they are the realities. I want to go now to some quiet corner
where I can polish what I have learnt, sort out my accumulations, be
undisturbed by these transitory symptomatic things....

"What was that boy saying? They are burning the STAR office.... Well,
let them...."

And as if to emphasize his detachment, his aversion, from the things
that hurried through the night about them, from the red flare in the
sky and the distant shouts and revolver shots and scuffling flights down
side streets, he began to talk again of aristocracy and the making of
greatness and a new great spirit in men. All the rest of his life, he
said, must be given to that. He would say his thing plainly and honestly
and afterwards other men would say it clearly and beautifully; here it
would touch a man and there it would touch a man; the Invisible King in
us all would find himself and know himself a little in this and a little
in that, and at last a day would come, when fair things and fine things
would rule the world and such squalor as this about them would be as
impossible any more for men as a Stone Age Corroboree....

Late or soon?

Benham sought for some loose large measure of time.

"Before those constellations above us have changed their shapes....

"Does it matter if we work at somethi