through evil. Read your Bible."

"I don't want to read it with _your_ eyes," replied the Journalist,
and marched testily down the path toward the house.

"Well," snapped the Doctor, "if I read it with _yours_, I should call
on the Almighty to smite this planet with his fires and send us
spinning, a flaming brand through space, to annihilation--the great
scheme would seem to me a failure--but I don't believe it is." And off
he marched in the other direction.

The Lawyer shrugged his shoulders, and suppressed, as well as he
could, a smile. The Youngster, leaning his elbows on his knees,
recited under his breath:

"And as he sat, all suddenly there rolled,
From where the woman wept upon the sod,
Satan's deep voice, 'Oh Thou unhappy God.'"

"Exactly," said the Lawyer.

"What's that?" asked the Violinist.

"Only the last three lines of a great little poem by a little great
Irishman named Stephens--entitled 'What Satan Said.'"

"After all," said the Lawyer, "the Doctor is probably right. It all
depends on one's point of view."

"And one's temperament," said the Violinist.

"And one's education," said the Critic.

Just here the Doctor came back,--and he came back his smiling self. He
made a dash down the path to where the Journalist was evidently
sulking, went up behind him, threw an arm over his shoulder, and led
him back into the circle.

"See here," he said, "you are all my guests. I am unreasonably fond of
you, even if we can't see Life from the same point of view. Man as an
individual, and Man as a part of the Scheme are two different things.
I asked you down here to enjoy yourselves, not to argue. I
apologize--all my fault--unpardonable of me. Come now--we have decided
to stay as long as we can--we are all interested. It is not every
generation that has the honor to sit by, and watch two systems meet
at the crossroads and dispute the passage to the Future. We'll agree
not to discuss the ethics of the matter again. If the men marching out
there to the frontier can agree to face the cannon--and there are as
many opinions there as here--surely we can _look on_ in silence."

And on that agreement we all went to bed.

But on the following day, as we sat in the garden after dinner, our
attempts to "keep off the grass" were miserably visible. They cast a
constraint on the party. Every topic seemed to lead to the forbidden
enclosure. It was at a very critical moment that the Sculptor, sitting
cr