what I'm
so cock-a-hoop about to-night is that life's so full of things just
ahead, things that are going to happen. I say, look at that moon; I sort
of feel as though I could jump over her if only I tried hard enough!"

"That's what youth lives on," said Boase--"not on what happens, but on
what may happen. Every morning when you wake don't you feel--'To-day
_It_ may happen,' though you haven't the vaguest idea what It may be?"

"Why, yes, I think that's true," said Ishmael slowly.

"Yes, it's true. It's what youth and hope and courage lives by."

"And old people--what do they live by?"

"Ah, that everyone has to find out for himself. It depends largely on
what his middle-age has drawn on, and that's nearly always something
more material than what fed his youth. There's only one thing
certain--that we all have something, some secret bread of our own soul,
by which we live, that nourishes and sustains us. It may be a different
thing for each man alive."

"We must each work out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could
have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring
through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such
as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not
unexpected, did not administer it, though Ishmael could have sworn he
felt his smile through the darkness.

"Damnation, salvation, it's much the same thing," said Boase,
cheerfully, "though naturally youth likes to use the former word. But
the great thing is never to despise the means by which another man
attains it. Patience, tolerance, tolerance, patience...."

"Oh, I don't know," protested Ishmael. "I don't think much would get
done in the world at that rate, would it?"

"Perhaps not. And you have so much to do in it.... When d'you start?"

"To-morrow morning with dawn, so I must be getting off. If you're awake
round about then, Da Boase, think of me beginning to remake the world
over at Cloom."

And Ishmael set off through the night, his feet lagging with a blissful
fatigue and his mind falling on an equally blissful numbness. As he went
the Parson's phrase went with him, stirring his imagination, and when he
climbed into the big bed beneath the drooping Christ it worked more
articulately within him. "Secret bread ..." he thought; "that's what he
called it.... I wonder if Phoebe's is sun--she wanted to pick the sun.
And his is religion, of course, and mine--I know what mine i