hed loudly while
Carlier thought: "That poor Kayerts; he is so fat and unhealthy. It
would be awful if I had to bury him here. He is a man I respect." . . .
Before they reached the verandah of their house they called one another
"my dear fellow."

The first day they were very active, pottering about with hammers and
nails and red calico, to put up curtains, make their house habitable and
pretty; resolved to settle down comfortably to their new life. For them
an impossible task. To grapple effectually with even purely material
problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than
people generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted
for such a struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of
its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all
independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and
forbidding it under pain of death. They could only live on condition of
being machines. And now, released from the fostering care of men with
pens behind the ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were
like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not
know what use to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to
make of their faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable
of independent thought.

At the end of two months Kayerts often would say, "If it was not for
my Melie, you wouldn't catch me here." Melie was his daughter. He had
thrown up his post in the Administration of the Telegraphs, though he
had been for seventeen years perfectly happy there, to earn a dowry for
his girl. His wife was dead, and the child was being brought up by his
sisters. He regretted the streets, the pavements, the cafes, his friends
of many years; all the things he used to see, day after day; all
the thoughts suggested by familiar things--the thoughts effortless,
monotonous, and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the
gossip, the small enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of
Government offices. "If I had had a decent brother-in-law," Carlier
would remark, "a fellow with a heart, I would not be here." He had left
the army and had made himself so obnoxious to his family by his laziness
and impudence, that an exasperated brother-in-law had made superhuman
efforts to procure him an appointment in the Company as a second-class
agent. Having not a penny in the world he was compelled to accept this
means o