ides of ourselves to such few as can see at all. She does not care
especially for me: why should she? But she has great penetration--more
than you have, far more than I. She sees my follies and faults as you
don't; she is a sort of a confessor. At present she is a Sunday-school
teacher, and I am her class."

"What _do_ you talk of, all the time?"

"It's not all the time, by any means. That is as she pleases; just now
it may be a good deal. By and by it may be your turn: then you'll know
some things you don't now. There is nothing I say to her which the world
might not overhear, if the world could understand it; and nothing that I
can repeat. Jim, I am done: we are up very late."

"Two things I must say yet, or ask, old man. You would stand by this
girl against the world; and yet you have charged yourself with me. It
may be idle to formulate remote and improbable contingencies, but it is
in our line. Would you take her part against me, and be my enemy--you
who are my only friend?"

"I would stand by her against the world, assuredly. I would stand by you
against all the world but her, I think. You two might quarrel, but
neither of you would be wrong: I know you both, and you don't know each
other. So I take the risk; it is none. When that time comes, neither of
you will find me wanting."

"I believe it. The other thing is this--forgive me if I go too far. Do
you know what even intelligent and charitable people would say of all
this? That it was very queer, very mixed, very dubious."

"They are not our judges, nor we theirs. What would they say of your
theories, and your way of life? To be sure, these concern yourself
alone. So is this inwardly my affair; it binds, it holds no other. Must
a man live in the woods, to form his own ethical code? Here too one may
keep clean hands and a pure heart, and do his own thinking. Life is very
queer, very mixed, very dubious; I take it as it comes. O, I see truth
here and there in your notions of it, though it has done well by me. If
I find in it something unique and precious, shall I thrust that aside,
because the statutes have not provided for such a case? But one thing I
can reject, so that for me it is not: the baser element. Gross
selfishness and vulgar passions are no more in my scheme than in yours:
if their suggestions were to rise, it would be easy to disown them. The
human beasts who let their lower nature rule, the animals who care for
themselves and call it caring for