hat
day, I was speaking only of the editorship--"

"But I was speaking of a theory of life. After all, the two things seem
to have been bound together rather closely--just as you said."

He restored his pencil to his pocket, palpably pulled himself together,
and proceeded:

"Oh, my theory was wholly rational--far more rational than yours;
rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly logical recoil from the
idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod self-indulgence under many
names that I saw, and see, everywhere about me. I have work to
do--serious work of large importance--and it seemed to me my duty to
carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still seems so.
Yet it was a life's work, already well along, and there was no need for
me to pay an excessive price for mere speed. I elected to let everything
go but intellect; I felt that I must do so; and in consequence, by the
simplest sort of natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up--had
shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my intellect was
not the biggest part of me. I have always understood that.... Still, it
seems that I required you to rediscover it for me in terms of everyday
life...."

"No, no!" she interrupted, "I didn't do that. Most of it you did
yourself. The start, the first push--don't you know?--it came from
Fifi."

"Well," he said slowly, "what was Fifi but you again in miniature?"

"A great deal else," said Sharlee.

Her gaze fell. She sunk her chin upon her hand, and a silence followed,
while before the mind's eye of each rose a vision of Fifi, with her
wasted cheeks and great eyes.

"As I say, I sacrificed everything to reason," continued Queed,
obviously struggling against embarrassment, "and yet pure reason was
never my ideal. I have impressed you as a thoroughly selfish person--you
have told me that--and so far as my immediate environment is concerned,
I have been, and am. So it may surprise you to be told that a life of
service has been from the beginning my ambition and my star. Of course I
have always interpreted service in the broadest sense, in terms of the
world; that was why I deliberately excluded all purely personal
applications of it. Yet it is from a proper combination of reason
with--the sociologist's 'consciousness of kind'--fellow-feeling,
sympathy, if you prefer, that is derived a life of fullest efficiency. I
have always understood the truth of this formula as applied to peoples.
It seems