king of buying him a tub all for himself, where he can sulk in
solitary grandeur to his heart's content."

"Perhaps not altogether in a class by himself," said Cavendish. "There
are others, you know, who make no use of their opportunities, and who
can never hope to be anything but ugly and useless, while their fellows
are getting all the good things of life, and enjoying them, and giving
pleasure of one kind or another into the bargain."

Something in his tone caused Natalie to look at him suddenly.

"I'm not enough of a pessimist," she answered firmly, "to believe that
true in anything beyond appearances. We are all apt, no matter how
conceited we may be, to underestimate at times the extent of our own
usefulness--or, rather, we are unconscious of the direction in which it
is most productive. If what you say is so, then all that is lacking is
the opportunity, and that is sure to come. We may squander many
opportunities, and, hardly less probably, actually turn to account in a
way we do not perceive many which we seem to ourselves to squander. In
any event, others will come. A woman once said to me that the good in
her was not cultivated nor exercised with a view to _individual
immortality_. That seemed to me to mean so much that I've built up quite
a little creed on it. It's the principle, isn't it, upon which the whole
scheme of the world hinges? A million leaves fall and decay to enrich
the soil wherefrom two million more may spring. An infinity of little
shell-fish die, and the ages grind their shells to powder to make the
sands and the chalk cliffs. Countless raindrops sacrifice their identity
to maintain that of one great river. And why should it not be so with
us? If only we can contribute in the smallest degree to the uplifting of
our kind, to the advancement of the race, to the maintenance of what we
know to be right, what possible difference can it make whether, in the
effort to be of such service, we live or succumb? We were put here, it
seems to me, very much as separate notes are put into one great harmony.
Each note is struck at the proper time, serves its purpose, and goes
into nothingness. Each plays its part, however small. We can't all be
included in the wonderful final chords. Our place may seem trivial to
us, and yet in some sense we may be sure we are all contributors to the
unity and perfection of the whole. That ought to be enough. No one note
achieves individual immortality, but each does someth