le of their only utility."

Eugene gently laughed.

"Of course you put it as unattractively as you can."

"Yes; but I can't put it unattractively enough to be true. I used to
fret and strive, and think archangels hung on my actions. There are
none; and if there were, what would they care for me? I am a part of it,
I suppose--a part of the Red King's dream, as Alice says. But what a
little part! I do well if I suffer little and give little suffering, and
so quietly go to help the cabbages."

"I don't think I believe it," said Eugene.

"I suppose not. It's hard to believe and impossible to disbelieve."

Stafford listened intently. Memories came back to him of books he had
read and put behind him; books wherein Ayre had found his creed, if the
thing could be called a creed. Was that true? Was he rending his soul
for nothing? A day earlier such a thought would have been to him at once
a torture and a sin. Now he found a strange comfort in it. Why strive
and cry, when none watched the effort or heard the agony? Why torture
himself? Why torture others? If the world were good, why was he not to
have his part? If it were bad, might he not find a quiet nook under the
wall, out of the storm? Why must he try to breast it? If Ayre was right,
what a tragical farce his struggle was, what a perverse delusion, what
an aimless flinging away of the little joy his little life could offer!
If this were so, then was he indeed alone in the world--except for
Claudia. Was his choice in truth between this world and the next? He
might throw one away and never find the other.

Then he cursed the voice, and himself for listening to it, and fell
again to vehement prayers and self-reproaches, trying to drown the
clamor of his heart with his insistent petitions. If he could only pray
as he had been wont to pray, he was saved. There lay a respite from
thought and a refuge from passion. Why could he not abandon his whole
soul to communion with God, as once he could, shutting out all save the
sense of sin and the conviction of forgiveness? He prayed for power to
pray. But, like the guilty king, he could not say Amen. He could not
bind his wandering thoughts, nor dispel the forward imaginings of his
distempered mind. He asked one thing, and in his heart desired another;
he prayed, and did not desire an answer to his prayer; for when he tried
to bow his heart in supplication, ever in the midst, between him and the
throne before which he bent, came