nevitably fall to his lot.

"I've done pretty well," he said, "but the strange thing is
that I owe it all to one piece of luck."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, do you remember Abraham? He was the man who had the future.
When we were students he beat me all along the line.
He got the prizes and the scholarships that I went in for.
I always played second fiddle to him. If he'd kept on he'd be
in the position I'm in now. That man had a genius for surgery.
No one had a look in with him. When he was
appointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of getting
on the staff. I should have had to become a G.P., and you
know what likelihood there is for a G.P. ever to get out of
the common rut. But Abraham fell out, and I got the job.
That gave me my opportunity."

"I dare say that's true."

"It was just luck. I suppose there was some kink in Abraham. Poor
devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether. He's got some
twopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria -- sanitary
officer or something like that. I'm told he lives with an ugly old
Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids. The fact is, I
suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is
character. Abraham hadn't got character."

Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of
character to throw up a career after half an hour's
meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more
intense significance. And it required still more character
never to regret the sudden step. But I said nothing, and Alec
Carmichael proceeded reflectively:

"Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I
regret what Abraham did. After all, I've scored by it."
He puffed luxuriously at the long Corona he was smoking.
"But if I weren't personally concerned I should be sorry at the waste.
It seems a rotten thing that a man should make such a hash of life."

I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life.
Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that
please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life;
and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a
year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what
meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to
society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my
tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?

Chapter LI

Tiare, when I told her this story, praised my prudence, and
for a few minut