ons. If it were not for the fact that Reed's ego
is his own property, not ours, we could have settled this point about
his future, months on months ago. Beyond a certain limit, though, there
is no way for us to tell how far he responds to our experimental
treatment. If his muscles do twitch, well and good. If they almost
twitch and don't, no mortal mind outside of his can reckon how wide the
falling short has been. You can talk about pure, abstract, impersonal
science, till the moon turns to an Edam cheese. You can no more grasp
the initial fact of what that science really is, than you can follow
the example of the athletic cow. There's always the distorting lens of
one's own mind to be taken into consideration; quite often there's
another fellow's: the eye-piece of the compound microscope, and the
objective. Take them away, and what impression do you get?" The doctor
pulled himself abruptly out of his harangue. "You can't get any
science, without the muddling addition of an ego, Brenton; and,
moreover, there's a tentacle or two of every ego that sticks out beyond
the edges of the law, and demands a separate code for its own
management. It is in framing that separate code that we all fall down."

But, to his regret, Brenton was deaf to his harangue.

"You think," he was repeating; "that it may end in that?"

The doctor ruffled his hair until it stood on end, rampant and tousled
as a corn-husk mat.

"Good Lord, man! A doctor doesn't think things," he said, with sudden
ire. "Moreover, if he did, he wouldn't say them out. Else, where would
his patients be? You can frighten any man to death, by offering him a
premature glimpse into the next decade. One day at a time is enough for
most of us; more than some of us can manage. As for Reed, it is
impossible to testify at present; in the end, I fancy, he will be the
chief witness for the defence. Meanwhile, he's game. You don't find
him maundering supinely about his latter end. No! Do sit down. That
wasn't a back-hander, aimed at you, Brenton. I hit straight, or not at
all. I wish I could give you a tonic that would take away a little of
your blamed self-sensitiveness, if I can coin the term. You're as
unselfish as the rest of them, until you get hold of a bit of
impersonal slander. Then you seize it in your arms, and hold it on your
mental stomach like a mustard plaster. It doesn't do any good, though.
It hurts like thunder in the time of it, and it plays the deuce with
you