ress,
with the waiter, with the landlord; the sordid scramble for money; in a
word, from the general spiritual failure of a man approaching forty. He
thought of escaping into a monastery somewhat as street girls think of
going into a house where they will be free from the dangers of the
chase, from worry about food and lodging, and where they will not have
to do their own washing and ironing.

Unmarried, without settled income, the voice of carnality now
practically stilled in him, he sometimes cursed the existence he had
shaped for himself. At times, weary of attempting to coerce words to do
his bidding, he threw down his pen and looked into the future. He could
see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and,
seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could
heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common
sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that
he threw up his hands and begged off.

Yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not escape
it. For though religion was without foundation it was also without limit
and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy, unexplored
altitudes. Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate
and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naivete
of the histories of its saints.

He did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural. Right here on
earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our
homes, in the street,--everywhere when we came to think of it? It was
really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and
account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than
inexplicable. Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of
a man? What was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping
influences? And, knottiest enigma of all, what was money?

There one found oneself confronted by primordial organic law, atrocious
edicts promulgated at the very beginning of the world and applied ever
since.

The rules were precise and invariable. Money attracted money,
accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the
scoundrelly and the mediocre. When, by an inscrutable exception, it
heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a
murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for
good, however charitable the hands which fain would a