ls. But it laughed chiefly at
inane obscenity.

One of these days, when phonography is as practicable as photography,
some one will make accurate records in these frowsy streets, and then,
after the manner of the elegant writers of Bucolics and Pastorals,
publish such a series of Urbanics and Pavimentals, phonographic
dialogues between the Colins and Dulcibellas of the pavement and the
gutter as will freeze up Hell with horror.

An anemic, flirtatious group passed us, the girls in front, the boys
behind.

"Good God, Campion, what _can_ you do?" I asked.

"Pay them, old chap," he returned quickly.

"What's the good of that?"

"Good? Oh, I see!" He laughed, with a touch of scorn. "It's a question
of definition. When you see a fellow creature suffering and it shocks
your refined susceptibilities and you say 'poor devil' and pass on, you
think you have pitied him. But you haven't. You think pity's a passive
virtue. It isn't. If you really pity anybody, you go mad to help
him--you don't stand by with tears of sensibility running down your
cheeks. You stretch out your hand, because you've damn well got to. If
he won't take it, or wipes you over the head, that's his look-out. You
can't work miracles. But once in a way he does take it, and then--well,
you work like hell to pull him through. And if you do, what bigger thing
is there in the world than the salvation of a human soul?"

"It's worth living for," said I.

"It's worth doing any confounded old thing for," he declared.

I envied Campion as I had envied no man before. He was alive in heart
and soul and brain; I was not quite alive even yet. But I felt better
for meeting him. I told him so. He tugged his beard again and laughed.

"I am a happy old crank. Perhaps that's the reason."

At the door of the hall of the Lambeth Ethical Society he stopped short
and turned on me; his jaw dropped and he regarded me in dismay.

"I'm the flightiest and feather-headedest ass that ever brayed," he
informed me. "I just remember I sent Miss Faversham a ticket for
this meeting about a fortnight ago. I had clean forgotten it, though
something uncomfortable has been tickling the back of my head all the
time. I'm miserably sorry."

I hastened to reassure him. "Miss Faversham and I are still good
friends. I don't think she'll mind my nodding to her from the other side
of the room." Indeed, she had written me one or two letters since my
recovery perfect in tact and sympathy, and