me what all this made me think of, and I
told her."

"It is simply becoming an obsession with you!" urged Morrison. Sylvia
remembered what Page had said about his irritation years ago when
Austin had withdrawn from the collector's field.

"Yes, it's becoming an obsession with me," agreed Page thoughtfully.
He spoke as he always did, with the simplest manner of direct
sincerity.

"You ought to make an effort against it, really, my dear fellow. It's
simply spoiling your life for you!"

"Worse than that, it's making me bad company!" said Page whimsically.
"I either ought to reform or get out."

Morrison set his enemy squarely before him and proceeded to do battle.
"I believe I know just what's in your mind, Page: I've been watching
it grow in you, ever since you gave up majolica."

"I never claimed that was anything but the blindest of impulses!"
protested Page mildly.

"But it wasn't. I knew! It was a sign you had been infected by the
spirit of the times and had 'caught it' so hard that it would be
likely to make an end of you. It's all right for the collective mind.
That's dense, obtuse; it resists enough to keep its balance. But it's
not all right for you. Now you just let me talk for a few minutes,
will you? I've an accumulated lot to say! We are all of us living
through the end of an epoch, just as much as the people of the old
regime lived through the last of an epoch in the years before the
French Revolution. I don't believe it's going to come with guillotines
or any of those picturesque trimmings. We don't do things that way any
more. In my opinion it will come gradually, and finally arrive about
two or three generations from now. And it oughtn't to come any sooner!
Sudden changes never save time. There's always the reaction to be
gotten over with, if they're sudden. Gradual growths are what last.
Now anybody who knows about the changes of society knows that there's
little enough any one person can do to hasten them or to put them
off. They're actuated by a law of their own, like the law which makes
typhoid fever come to a crisis in seven days. Now then, if you admit
that the process ought not to be hastened, and in the second place
that you couldn't hasten it if you tried, what earthly use _is_ there
in bothering your head about it! There are lots of people, countless
people, made expressly to do whatever is necessary, blunt chisels fit
for nothing but shaping grindstones. _Let them do it!_ You'll only ge