to Leonard, who had put his
wife to bed, and was sitting with her in the empty coffee-room. "If we
told him it was his duty to take you on, he might refuse to do it. The
fact is, he isn't properly educated. I don't want to set you against
him, but you'll find him a trial."

"I can never thank you sufficiently, Miss Schlegel," was all that
Leonard felt equal to.

"I believe in personal responsibility. Don't you? And in personal
everything. I hate--I suppose I oughtn't to say that--but the Wilcoxes
are on the wrong tack surely. Or perhaps it isn't their fault. Perhaps
the little thing that says 'I' is missing out of the middle of their
heads, and then it's a waste of time to blame them. There's a nightmare
of a theory that says a special race is being born which will rule the
rest of us in the future just because it lacks the little thing that
says 'I.' Had you heard that?"

"I get no time for reading."

"Had you thought it, then? That there are two kinds of people--our kind,
who live straight from the middle of their heads, and the other kind
who can't, because their heads have no middle? They can't say 'I.' They
AREN'T in fact, and so they're supermen. Pierpont Morgan has never said
'I' in his life."

Leonard roused himself. If his benefactress wanted intellectual
conversation, she must have it. She was more important than his ruined
past. "I never got on to Nietzsche," he said. "But I always understood
that those supermen were rather what you may call egoists."

"Oh no, that's wrong," replied Helen. "No superman ever said 'I want,'
because 'I want' must lead to the question, 'Who am I?' and so to Pity
and to Justice. He only says 'want.' 'Want Europe,' if he's Napoleon;
'want wives,' if he's Bluebeard; 'want Botticelli,' if he's Pierpont
Morgan. Never the 'I'; and if you could pierce through the superman,
you'd find panic and emptiness in the middle."

Leonard was silent for a moment. Then he said: "May I take it, Miss
Schlegel, that you and I are both the sort that say 'I'?"

"Of course."

"And your sister, too?"

"Of course," repeated Helen, a little sharply. She was annoyed with
Margaret, but did not want her discussed. "All presentable people say
'I.'"

"But Mr. Wilcox--he is not perhaps--"

"I don't know that it's any good discussing Mr. Wilcox either."

"Quite so, quite so," he agreed. Helen asked herself why she had snubbed
him. Once or twice during the day she had encouraged him to criticise,