urse of it the door-bell was heard
to ring; soon the door opened; a masculine murmur; then the maid Mary's
voice, clearly: "Yassuh, she's in.... Won't you rest your coat, Mr.
West?"

Mary entered the little back parlor, a card upon a tray. "Please draw
the folding doors," said Sharlee. "Say that I'll be in in a few
minutes."

They were alone once more, she and the little Doctor; the silence
enfolded them again; and she broke it by saying the last word she had to
say.

"I have gone into detail because I wanted to make the unfavorable
impression you produce upon your little world clear to you, for once.
But I can sum up all that I have said in less than six words. If you
remember anything at all that I have said, I wish you would remember
this. Mr. Queed, you are afflicted with a fatal malady. Your cosmos is
all Ego."

She started to rise, thought better of it, and sat still in her flowered
chair full in the lamplight. The little Doctor stood at the
mantel-shelf, his elbow upon it, and the silence lengthened. To do
something, Sharlee pulled off her right long glove and slowly put it
back again. Then she pulled off her left long glove, and about the time
she was buttoning the last button he began speaking, in a curious,
lifeless voice.

"I learned to read when I was four years old out of a copy of the New
York _Evening Post_. It came to the house, I remember, distinctly,
wrapped around two pork chops. That seemed to be all the reading matter
we had in the house for a long time--I believe Tim was in hard luck in
those days--and by the time I was six I had read that paper all through
from beginning to end, five times. I have wondered since if that
incident did not give a bent to my whole mind. If you are familiar with
the _Evening Post_, you may appreciate what I mean.... It came out in me
exactly like a duck's yearning for water; that deep instinct for the
printed word. Of course Tim saw that I was different from him. He helped
me a little in the early stages, and then he stood back, awed by my
learning, and let me go my own gait. When I was about eight, I learned
of the existence of public libraries. I daresay it would surprise you to
know the books I was reading in this period of my life--and writing too:
for in my eleventh year I was the author of a one-volume history of the
world, besides several treatises. And I early began to think, too. What
was the fundamental principle underlying the evolution of a higher an