nd that is why he and Shakib begin to quarrel. The idea!
That a fledgling should presume to pick flaws. To Shakib, who is
textual to a hair, this is intolerable. And that state of oneness
between them shall be subject hereafter to "the corrosive action of
various unfriendly agents." For Khalid, who has never yet been
snaffled, turns restively from the bit which his friend, for his own
sake, would put in his mouth. The rupture follows. The two for a while
wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing and
cultivating his bank account, shoulders his peddling-box and jogs
along with his inspiring demon, under whose auspices, he tells us, he
continues to write verse and gull with his brummagems the pious dames
of the suburbs. And Khalid sits on his peddling-box for hours
pondering on the necessity of disposing of it somehow. For now he
scarcely makes more than a few peddling-trips each month, and when he
returns, he does not go to the bank to add to his balance, but to draw
from it. That is why the accounts of the two Syrians do not fare
alike; Shakib's is gaining in weight, Khalid's is wasting away.

Yes, the strenuous spirit is a long time dead in Khalid. He is
gradually reverting to the Oriental instinct. And when he is not
loafing in Battery Park, carving his name on the bench, he is
burrowing in the shelves of some second-hand book-shop or dreaming in
the dome of some Broadway skyscraper. Does not this seem inevitable,
however, considering the palingenetic burden within him? And is not
loafing a necessary prelude to the travail? Khalid, of course, felt
the necessity of this, not knowing the why and wherefor. And from the
vast world of paper-bound souls, for he relished but pamphlets at the
start--they do not make much smoke in the fire, he would say--from
that vast world he could command the greatest of the great to help him
support the loafing while. And as by a miracle, he came out of that
chaos of contending spirits without a scratch. He enjoyed the
belligerency of pamphleteers as an American would enjoy a prize
fight. But he sided with no one; he took from every one his best and
consigned him to Im-Hanna's kitchen. Torquemada could not have done
better; but Khalid, it is hoped, will yet atone for his crimes.

Monsieur Pascal, with whom he quarrels before he burns, had a
particular influence upon him. He could not rest after reading his
"Thoughts" until he read the Bible. And of the Prophets of the