ves, their outer or practical lives, and
their inner or personal lives. But he himself had but one life. He was a
machine; a machine which turned out matchless work for the enlightenment
of the world, but after all a machine. He was intellect. He was Pure
Reason. Yet he himself had said, and written, that intellectual
supremacy was not the true badge of supremacy of type. There was nothing
sure of races that was not equally sure of the individuals which make up
those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought,
feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of
their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all.
That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the
mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters of caverns.

And now this part of him, which had for some time been stirring
uneasily, had risen suddenly without bidding of his and in defiance of
his reason, and laid hold of something in his environment. In doing so,
it appeared to have thrust upon him an inner, or personal, life from
this time forward. That life lay in being of use to the old man before
him: he who had never been of personal use to anybody so far, and the
miserable old man who had no comfort anywhere but in him.

He knew the scientific name of this kind of behavior very well. It was
altruism, the irrational force that had put a new face upon the world.
Fifi, he remembered well, had assured him that in altruism he would find
that fiercer happiness which was as much better than content as being
well was better than not being sick. But ... could this be happiness,
this whirling confusion that put him to such straits to keep a calm face
above the tumult of his breast? If this was happiness, then it came to
him for their first meeting wearing a strange face....

"You know the story?"

Queed moved in his chair. "Yes. I--have heard it."

"Of course," said Nicolovius. "It is as well known as Iscariot's. By
God, how they've hounded me!"

Evidently he was recovering fast. There was bitterness, rather than
shame, in his voice. He took his hands from his eyes, adjusted his cap,
stiffened up in his chair. The sallow tints were coming back into his
face; his lips took on color; his eye and hand were steady. Not every
man could have passed through such a cataclysm and emerged so little
marked. He picked up his cigarette from the table; it was still going.
This fact was