out which he is a mere shivering forked radish, found time to
order me to bed, but was drawn away immediately into an argument
concerning the climate in the south. My friend, evidently viewing
underwear, remarked that he was going south, not north to Labrador, and
where was his seersucker suit. He was informed that his seersucker suit
had been in the rag-basket for years, and, anyway, her husband wasn't
going on a trip without adequate clothing. I reached for my boots and
put them on. It seemed to me it was my duty to see him safely into his
berth on the Limited. After some ten minutes of vigorous packing and
debate, they came down, and found me ready.

"You aren't going too?" cried Bill.

"To the train," I said. "He might fall asleep on the road."

If I had hoped to get much more information out of him by going into
Newark, I was disappointed. The question of the Carvilles and their
adventures had been wiped clean from his mind by the more immediate and
personal affair of an assignment. I am afraid that even if I had had a
part in this amusing attempt to forestall the other papers I would still
have been more interested in the airman than in the astonishing
enterprise on which he was engaged. I could not bring myself to gape at
scientific marvels. As I have said before, let Science do her worst:
humanity remains the same fascinating enigma.

And yet, as we sat in the empty, rattling car, our feet crunching the
pea-nut shells and chicle coverings of some Passaic joy-riders, and my
friend discussed with enthusiasm the probable outcome of the expedition,
I realized that, after all, I could not expect him to share my burden.
For good or ill the writer must carry with him for ever the problem of
the human soul. The plastic artist has his own problems of light, and
mass, and the like. And from this I came back circuitously to Mr.
Carville. I was puzzled to find a name for the deliberate rejection of
his responsibilities as an artist. One could not call him a renegade or
a coward, for he was neither. And yet his acceptance of an obscure
destiny had in it nothing of the sacredness of renunciation. It was
almost as though he were hoarding his soul's wealth, and adroitly
avoiding any of the pangs and labours of the spiritual life. Because it
seemed to me that, for a man of his receptivity, the normal bovine
existence of the humble folk among whom he lived was out of the
question. He knew too much, was too alive to the shiftin