assurance as to its value. It may
be good, more likely it isn't; in any case, I have turned it loose to
shift for itself. It can survive or not; its doing so is immaterial.
Perhaps as immaterial as my existence is to the Great Artist who
conceived the botched job called me."

"But, Lawrence, why insist that you don't matter to Him?"

"Oh, because I am scarcely aware of Him at all; indeed, I am not aware
of Him, and I am sure He isn't aware of me."

"You have not any way to prove that," declared Philip.

"True, except that I can imaginatively comprehend the size of time and
space, and all that is therein. I know my own size, and I can readily
imagine that the creator of the whole is no more aware of me than I am,
say, of a small worm that may be in the heart of my cherub there."

"We do seem pretty small in the face of the stars," said Claire.

"Yes, and so impossible," added Lawrence. "I didn't realize until to-day
how utterly impossible I really am."

"But, impossible or not, here you are," Philip laughed.

"Yes, here I am and there I may be, but in either place I am not
especially possible. You are; you can go out and make a definite,
independent impression on life; that makes you possible in that you are
forcing recognition of power and capability. I can't do that. The
impression I make is one of incapability. For myself I am impossible,
and for others more so."

"Which has nothing to do with God," said Philip, in his tone a touch of
distaste.

Lawrence recognized it and became silent.

Claire made him take the quinin and heated bricks for his feet. Philip
went out to cut wood for the fire, leaving her alone with the sick man.
She was so full of her own wickedness, as she conceived it, that she
dared not tell him her thoughts. She wanted to explain that she loved
him, that she had loved him all along, but she could not. She looked at
him, and felt sure that he had now no love for her.

Lawrence was trying to follow out in his mind a searching inquiry as to
his relation to life. "If I could only establish that," he thought, "I
could get myself straight and there would be something to start from. If
I knew which way to move!" But he was unable to do any coherent
thinking. His head ached, his lips burned with fever, and his body kept
him busy with the sensation of pain. It seemed to him that illness made
his state more detestable, but it also offered him a chance of escape
from the whole drab business. He