bedstead, in a chair
covered with tobacco-colored plush.

"You feel better?" I asked.

"Oh, I feel all right," he answered, with a smile. "It's queer, but I
do."

My eye fell upon the long line of sectional book-cases that lined one
side of the room. "Why, you've got quite a library here," I observed.

"Yes, I've managed to get together some good books. But there is so much
to read nowadays, so much that is really good and new, a man has the
hopeless feeling he can never catch up with it all. A thousand writers
and students are making contributions today where fifty years ago there
was one."

"I've been following your speeches, after a fashion,--I wish I might have
been able to read more of them. Your argument interested me. It's new,
unlike the ordinary propaganda of--"

"Of agitators," he supplied, with a smile.

"Of agitators," I agreed, and tried to return his smile. "An agitator who
appears to suggest the foundations of a constructive programme and who
isn't afraid to criticise the man with a vote as well as the capitalist
is an unusual phenomenon."

"Oh, when we realize that we've only got a little time left in which to
tell what we think to be the truth, it doesn't require a great deal of
courage, Paret. I didn't begin to see this thing until a little while
ago. I was only a crude, hot-headed revolutionist. God knows I'm crude
enough still. But I began to have a glimmering of what all these new
fellows in the universities are driving at." He waved his hand towards
the book-cases. "Driving at collectively, I mean. And there are attempts,
worthy attempts, to coordinate and synthesize the sciences. What I have
been saying is not strictly original. I took it on the stump, that's all.
I didn't expect it to have much effect in this campaign, but it was an
opportunity to sow a few seeds, to start a sense of personal
dissatisfaction in the minds of a few voters. What is it Browning says?
It's in Bishop Blougram, I believe. 'When the fight begins within
himself, a man's worth something.' It's an intellectual fight, of
course."

His words were spoken quietly, but I realized suddenly that the
mysterious force which had drawn me to him now, against my will, was an
intellectual rather than apparently sentimental one, an intellectual
force seeming to comprise within it all other human attractions. And yet
I felt a sudden contrition.

"See here, Krebs," I said, "I didn't come here to bother you about these
matters