e line."

"You were scarcely fascinatingly efficient in the garb in which you
first appeared to me." Philip laughed at the recollection.

"That isn't fair. I would have been if I had had enough to eat."

She looked at him, and her eyes sparkled gaily.

"I surrender," he said. "You would have been. Too fascinating!"

"That also depends on circumstances," said Lawrence. "She wouldn't be
fascinatingly efficient in that back-to-nature garb if she were doing
charity work at home or if she were taking a trip in an airplane."

"You carry your point," she agreed. "I shouldn't care to try."

"Which leads me," Lawrence went on, "to observe that our friend,
Shakespeare, was, after all, right in bequeathing _Hamlet_ to us. He
might not look well in our own castle, but as a portrait viewed in our
neighbor's house, or in a house unspecified, he is the high point of
subjective tragedy."

Ortez did not answer for a moment, then he said, quietly: "I had rather
lose my winter's work than lost _Hamlet_ from my memory, yet when I
think of what there is in life for a man, did he not have _Hamlet's_
doubt to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no
knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself
out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with
subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the
strength of the war we wage toward freedom."

"Of course," agreed Lawrence, "but that requires only one thing, the
master passion to do, because for us, doing is life. I cannot regret
_Hamlet's_ hesitating failure. It was his life. To every man there is
but one way, his way, and whether it be failure or success does not
depend upon an avenged wrong, a successful marriage, or even a great
work done for humanity. The test is, is his life worth the price he pays
to live it? I imagine _Hamlet's_ was."

"Fallacies!" interrupted Claire. "Why, then, the tragedy?"

"Because _Hamlet_ did not know that the governing laws to which he
strove to hold himself were not laws, not true, not necessary."

"You mean," Ortez inquired, "that he was not bound to avenge his father
and punish his mother?"

"I mean just that. Why should he? She was satisfied, his father was
dead, and _Hamlet_ gained nothing by his moral strutting and raving
against his own hesitating hand."

"But you have swept aside all moral law," protested Philip.

"What moral law is there that is external to me? What, indeed, is