ssion, and,
with Eugen at least, hard work out of it; the education of his boy,
whom he made his constant companion in every leisure moment, and
taught, with a wisdom that I could hardly believe--it seemed so like
inspiration--composition, translation, or writing of his own--incessant
employment of some kind. He never seemed able to pass an idle moment;
and yet there were times when, it seemed to me, his work did not satisfy
him, but rather seemed to disgust him.

Once when I asked him if it were so, he laid down his pen and said,
"Yes."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because--for no reason that I know; but because I am an unreasonable
fool."

"An unreasonable fool to work hard?"

"No; but to go on as if hard work now can ever undo what years of
idleness have done."

"Do you believe in work?" I asked.

"I believe it is the very highest and holiest thing there is, and the
grandest purifier and cleanser in the world. But it is not a panacea
against every ill. I believe that idleness is sometimes as strong as
work, and stronger. You may do that in a few years of idleness which a
life-time of afterwork won't cover, mend, or improve. You may make holes
in your coat from sheer laziness, and then find that no amount of
stitching will patch them up again."

I seldom answered these mystic monologues. Love gives a wonderful
sharpness even to dull wits; it had sharpened mine so that I often felt
he indulged in those speeches out of sheer desire to work off some grief
or bitterness from his heart, but that a question might, however
innocent, overshoot the mark, and touch a sore spot--the thing I most
dreaded. And I did not feel it essential to my regard for him to know
every item of his past.

In such cases, however, when there is something behind--when one knows
it, only does not know what it is (and Eugen had never tried to conceal
from me that something had happened to him which he did not care to
tell)--then, even though one accept the fact, as I accepted it, without
dispute or resentment, one yet involuntarily builds theories, has ideas,
or rather the ideas shape themselves about the object of interest, and
take their coloring from him, one can not refrain from conjectures,
surmises. Mine were necessarily of the most vague and shadowy
description; more negative than active, less theories as to what he had
been or done than inferences from what he let fall in talk or conduct as
to what he had not been or done.

In o