There are many
thousands who bear the same cross as you do."

"But where is the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man,
springing from his chair and pacing up and down the consulting-room.
"If I were heir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results, I
could understand it, but I am of my father's type. I love all that is
gentle and beautiful--music and poetry and art. The coarse and animal
is abhorrent to me. Ask any of my friends and they would tell you
that. And now that this vile, loathsome thing--ach, I am polluted to
the marrow, soaked in abomination! And why? Haven't I a right to ask
why? Did I do it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And
look at me now, blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest.
Talk about the sins of the father--how about the sins of the Creator?"
He shook his two clinched hands in the air--the poor impotent atom with
his pin-point of brain caught in the whirl of the infinite.

The doctor rose and placing his hands upon his shoulders he pressed him
back into his chair once more. "There, there, my dear lad," said he;
"you must not excite yourself. You are trembling all over. Your
nerves cannot stand it. We must take these great questions upon trust.
What are we, after all? Half-evolved creatures in a transition stage,
nearer perhaps to the Medusa on the one side than to perfected humanity
on the other. With half a complete brain we can't expect to understand
the whole of a complete fact, can we, now? It is all very dim and
dark, no doubt; but I think that Pope's famous couplet sums up the
whole matter, and from my heart, after fifty years of varied
experience, I can say----"

But the young baronet gave a cry of impatience and disgust. "Words,
words, words! You can sit comfortably there in your chair and say
them--and think them too, no doubt. You've had your life, but I've
never had mine. You've healthy blood in your veins; mine is putrid.
And yet I am as innocent as you. What would words do for you if you
were in this chair and I in that? Ah, it's such a mockery and a
make-believe! Don't think me rude, though, doctor. I don't mean to be
that. I only say that it is impossible for you or any other man to
realise it. But I've a question to ask you, doctor. It's one on which
my whole life must depend." He writhed his fingers together in an
agony of apprehension.

"Speak out, my dear sir. I have every sympathy with you."

"Do you