there came a need to justify myself--to show that I was not the mere
vicious unbeliever poor grandad thought me. And so I fought to give
myself up--and I won. I found the peace of the lone places."

His voice grew dreamy--ceased, as if that peace were indeed too utter
for words. Then with an effort he resumed:

"But after a while the world began to rumble in my ears. A man can't cut
himself off from it forever. God has well seen to that! As the message
cleared in my mind, there grew a need to give it out. This seemed easy
off there. The little puzzles that the world makes so much of solved
themselves for me. I saw them to be puzzles of the world's own
creating--all artificial--all built up--fashioned clumsily enough from
man's brute fear of the half-God, half-devil he has always made in his
own image.

"But now that I'm here, Nance, I find myself already a little
bewildered. The solution of the puzzles is as simple as ever, but the
puzzles themselves are more complex as I come closer to them--so complex
that my simple answer will seem only a vague absurdity."

He paused and she felt his eyes upon her--felt that he had turned from
his abstractions to look at her more personally.

"Even since meeting you, Nance," he went on with an odd, inward note in
his voice, "I've been wondering if Hoover could by some chance have been
right. When I left, Hoover said I was a fool--a certain common variety
of fool."

"Oh, I'm sure you're not--at least, not the common kind. I dare say that