in this place.

Hereupon, fully aroused, the youth tells with freedom why the problem
seems so hard for the young people, and how their elders all insist
upon such frightful discouragements, and how much he longs to know the
truth about life, and whether all such doubts and scruples as those of
his own father and of Ruth's mother are well founded. At last the
prisoner begins his reply:

"They haven't the point of view," he said. "It is life that is the
great adventure. Not love, not marriage, not business. They are just
chapters in the book. The main thing is to take the road
fearlessly--to have courage to live one's life."

"Courage?"

{249}

Lannithorne nodded.

"That is the great word. Don't you see what ails your father's point
of view, and my wife's? One wants absolute security in one way for
Ruth; the other wants absolute security in another way for you. And
security--why, it's just the one thing a human being can't have, the
thing that's the damnation of him if he gets it! The reason it is so
hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is that he has
that false sense of security. To demand it just disintegrates a man.
I don't know why. It does."

Oliver shook his head uncertainly.

"I don't quite follow you, sir. Oughtn't one to try to be safe?"

"One ought to try, yes. That is common prudence. But the point is
that, whatever you do or get, you aren't after all secure. There is
no such condition, and the harder you demand it, the more risk you
run. So it is up to a man to take all reasonable precautions about
his money, or his happiness, or his life, and trust the rest. What
every man in the world is looking for is the sense of having the
mastery over life. But I tell you, boy, there is only one thing that
really gives it!"

"And that is?"

Lannithorne hesitated perceptibly. For the thing he was about to
tell this undisciplined lad was his most precious possession; it was
the price of wisdom for which he had paid with the years of his
life. No man parts lightly with such knowledge.

"It comes," he said, with an effort, "with the knowledge of our
power to endure. That's it. _You are safe only when you can stand
everything that can happen to you._ Then, and then only! Endurance
is the measure of a man! ... Sometimes I think it is harder to
endure what we deserve, like me," said Lannithorne, "than what we
don't. I was a