that I--rather missed its force as to individuals. I--I am
ready to admit that an individual life can draw an added meaning--and
richness from a service, not of the future, but of the present--not of
the race but ... well, of the unfortunate on the doorstep. Do you
understand," he asked abruptly, "what I am trying to tell you?"

She assured him that she understood perfectly.

A slow painful color came into his face.

"Then you appreciate the nature and the size of the debt I owe you."

"Oh, no, no, no! If I have done anything at all to help you," said
Sharlee, considerably moved, "then I am very glad and proud. But as for
what you speak of ... no, no, people always do these things for
themselves. The help comes from within--"

"Oh, _don't_ talk like that!" broke from him. "You throw out the idea
somehow that I consider that I have undergone some remarkable conversion
and transformation. I haven't done anything of the sort. I am just the
same as I always was. Just the same.... Only now I am willing to admit,
as a scientific truth, that time given to things not in themselves
directly productive, can be made to pay a good dividend. If what I said
led you to think that I meant more than that, then I have, for once,
expressed myself badly. I tell you this," he went on hurriedly, "simply
because you once interested yourself in trying to convince me of the
truth of these views. Some of the things you said that night managed to
stick. They managed to stick. Oh, I give you that. I suppose you might
say that they gradually became like mottoes or texts--not scientific, of
course ... personal. Therefore, I thought it only fair to tell you that
while my cosmos is still mostly Ego--I suppose everybody's is in one way
or another--I have--made changes, so that I am no longer wholly out of
relation with life."

"I am glad you wanted to tell me," said Sharlee, "but I have known it
for--oh, the longest time."

"In a certain sense," he hurried on--"quite a different sense--I should
say that your talk--the only one of the kind I ever had--did for me the
sort of thing ... that most men's mothers do for them when they are
young."

She made no reply.

"Perhaps," he said, almost defiantly, "you don't like my saying that?"

"Oh, yes! I like it very much."

"And yet," he said, "I don't think of you as I fancy a man would think
of his mother, or even of his sister. It is rather extraordinary. It has
become clear to me that you have o