for?" he mused--"Merely to propagate our
own kind and bring more effortless beings into the world to cumber it?
The very idea is horrible! Work is the very blood and bone of
existence--without it we should rot! But one must work for something or
some one--wife?--children?--Useless labour!--for in nine cases out
often the wife becomes a bore,--and the children grow up ungrateful.
Why waste strength and feeling on either?"

Thus mentally arguing, the exquisite lines of Tennyson's "Lotus Eaters"
suddenly rang in his memory like a chime of bells from the old English
village where he had lived as a boy, when his mother, one of the past
sweet "old-fashioned" women, used to read to him and teach him much of
the best in literature,--

"Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast
And in a little while our lips are dumb,
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past,
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?"

An effortless existence would be the existence of such as these fabled
Lotus Eaters--moreover, it was not possible it could go on, since all
Nature shows effort without cessation. Roger Seaton knew this as all
know it--but his soul's demand remained unsatisfied, for he sought to
know the CAUSE of all the toil and trouble,--the "why" it should be.
And at the back of his mind there was ever a teasing reminder of
Morgana and her strange theories, some of which she had half imparted
to him when their friendship had first begun. For her Tennyson's
line--"Death is the end of life"--would be the statement of a foolish
fallacy, as she held that there is no such thing as death, only failure
to adapt the spirit to advancing and higher change in its physical
organisation. To-day he remembered with curious clearness what she had
said on this subject--

"Radio-activity is the chief secret of life. It is for us to learn how
to absorb it into our systems as we grow,--to add by its means to our
supplies of vitality and energy. It never gives out,--nor should we.
The Nature-intention is that we should become better, stronger, more
beautiful, more mentally and spiritually perfect--and that we do not
fulfil this intention is our own fault. The decimation of the human
race by wars an