So he got his fried eggs and coffee, and the family hung around him, and
Joe, circled with such warm friendliness, was glad to be alive. He was
especially pleased with Mrs. Rann's regard. But Joe was always a
favorite with mothers. Possibly because he was so fond of their babies.
Possibly because mothers love a good son, wherever they find one.
Possibly because his heart was large enough to contain as something
precious their obscure lives. Just before he left John asked him:

"Will the printery soon be running, Mr. Joe?"

"Tell you later," murmured Joe, and went out. But he was sorely
troubled.

However, to Joe there had been revealed--almost in a day and after
thirty-eight years of insulated life--two of the supreme human facts.
There was humanity, on the one side, building the future, the new state,
organizing its scattered millions into a rich, healthy, joyous life and
calling to every man to enlist in the ranks of the creators; and then
there was woman, the undying splendor of the world, the beauty that
drenches life with meaning and magic, that stirs the elemental in a man,
that wakens the race instinct, that demands the creation of new
generations to inhabit that new state of the future. Intertwined, these
wondrous things drew the heart now this way, now that, and to Joe they
arose separately in intermittent pulsations that threatened to absorb
his existence.

He did not dare go to Myra until he was sure of himself. It seemed that
he would have to choose between woman and work. It seemed as if his
work would lead into peril, dirt, disaster, and that he could not ask a