idn't
look a smiling matter. No, it was not funny; it was rather pathetic; he
was so representative of all the past victims of the Great Joke. But it
is by folly alone that the world moves, and so it is a respectable thing
upon the whole. And besides, he was what one would call a good man. I
don't mean especially because he had offered up a prayer. No! He was
really a decent fellow, he was quite unfitted for this world, he was a
failure, a good man cornered--a sight for the gods; for no decent mortal
cares to look at that sort." A thought seemed to occur to him. He turned
his face to the girl. "And you, who have been cornered too--did you
think of offering a prayer?"

Neither her eyes nor a single one of her features moved the least bit.
She only let fall the words:

"I am not what they call a good girl."

"That sounds evasive," said Heyst after a short silence. "Well, the good
fellow did pray and after he had confessed to it I was struck by the
comicality of the situation. No, don't misunderstand me--I am not
alluding to his act, of course. And even the idea of Eternity, Infinity,
Omnipotence, being called upon to defeat the conspiracy of two miserable
Portuguese half-castes did not move my mirth. From the point of view of
the supplicant, the danger to be conjured was something like the end
of the world, or worse. No! What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel
Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the
veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the
world's bustle--that I should have been there to step into the situation
of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief. . .
."

"You are putting it on," she interrupted in her seductive voice, with a
coaxing intonation.

"No. I am not like that, born or fashioned, or both. I am not for
nothing the son of my father, of that man in the painting. I am he, all
but the genius. And there is even less in me than I make out, because
the very scorn is falling away from me year after year. I have never
been so amused as by that episode in which I was suddenly called to act
such an incredible part. For a moment I enjoyed it greatly. It got him
out of his corner, you know."

"You saved a man for fun--is that what you mean? Just for fun?"

"Why this tone of suspicion?" remonstrated Heyst. "I suppose the sight
of this particular distress was disagreeable to me. What you call fun
came afterwards, when it dawned