ment later, "she does not want to be rescued, and, there-
fore, I will rescue her."

As he went down the road her shapely figure floated
before his eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue.
He wagged his head angrily at the apparition, but it
would not go away. He tried to concentrate his mind on
a deep, philosophical maxim, but her disturbing image
came between him and his thought, blotting out the lat-
ter so completely that a moment after he had stated his
aphorism he could not remember what it had been. Such
a condition of mind was so unusual that it bewildered
him.

"Is a mind, then, so unstable," said he, "that a mere
figure, an animated geometrical arrangement can shake
it from its foundations?"

The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building
its temples over a volcano. . .

"A puff," said he, "and it is gone. Beneath all is
chaos and red anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent
appetite. Our eyes tell us what to think about, and our
wisdom is no more than a catalogue of sensual stimuli."

He would have been in a state of deep dejection were
it not that through his perturbation there bubbled a
stream of such amazing well-being as he had not felt
since childhood. Years had toppled from his shoulders.